New Delhi: In recent news, Cash strapped airline Jet Airways recently grounded several planes and even suspended flight operation to about 13 international routes till April-end. The carrier grounded seven more planes recently due to non-payment for rentals. So far, the airline has grounded 54 aircrafts in total. The airline has reduced flight frequency as well which has led to reduced seat availability. In the past month only, nearly million seats have gone missing which is a problem as India is the world's fastest expanding domestic aviation market. As per a data, seat availability in domestic flights have gone down from 14.7 million in January to about 13.4 million in February, reported Economic Times. This is mainly because of Jet Airways cancelling flights and grounding more planes.

Here it is to be noted that the financial daily report also mentioned that this shortage of seats is also because in IndiGo cancelling flights due to the shortage of cabin crew. The airline has cancelled 30 flights out the total 1,300 daily flight due to the shortage of pilots. Increasing domestic flight cancellations have also led to airfare hike. Indian aviation watchdog DGCA who is reviewing the hike in airfare on specific routes across the country, recently advised airlines to increase flights so that the fares remain in check. The DGCA in its recent meeting discussed the upward spiral in airfares as Jet Airways continues to ground planes and cancels flights.

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However, It may be noted that after Ethiopian Boeing 737 MAX flight crash earlier this month, 12 Boeing 737 planes by Spicejet were grounded. However, this seat availability decline does not include the missing seats caused due to this. This capacity reduction is even worse than the one caused due to the grounding of Kingfisher flights, the report added. A senior aviation regulator told ET, "At its peak, Kingfisher used to operate a fleet of 69 aircraft, which went out of the system. This grounding of aircraft as on date is bigger than Kingfisher but the aviation market is holding up, for now."

Worth mentioning here is that the Naresh Goyal-led airline has reduced its operations to one-fourth from over 600 daily flights operated earlier. Only one-third of its 119 fleets is operational now.  As per a recent report, Jet Airways' pilot said that they are under severe financial stress because of non-payment for salaries for the past three months. Some pilots have even resorted to mortgage jewellery in order to take short-term loans. They also emphasised that if this situation continues, they will not be able to pay their loan EMIs.

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