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Cash-strapped GoAir is understood to have asked the Airports Authority of India’s (AAI) to encash the ₹82-crore bank guarantee to settle its outstanding dues.
The Wadia Group-owned airline has further written to the airports’ body requesting to reduce the required bank guarantees due to lower operations. This comes even as the AAI has put GoAir on cash-and-carry mode over unpaid dues.
AAI sources told BusinessLine that, “GoAir’s management has proposed that they will themselves encash their bank guarantee and pay the dues upfront.”
After being put on cash-and-carry mode, a fortnight ago, the no-frills carrier had paid an upfront payment of ₹2 crore and had assured the submission of a payment structure proposal. Post that GoAir was given time till August 28.
GoAir has further requested if “the bank guarantees could be reduced since the operations are going to be skewed for at least two quarters.”
GoAir declined to comment on this development.
Like every other airline, GoAir, too, is hit by the pandemic. Due to the lower passenger traffic and mounting debt, GoAir has reduced its operations to merely 15-18 flights a day instead of operating its full fleet of 55 aircraft.
However, the source said, days after the proposal was submitted by the then CEO, Vinay Dube, GoAir announced that he had quit with immediate effect. On August 14, GoAir announced that Kaushik Khona was to replace Vinay Dube as CEO of GoAir.
“So now, AAI has written to GoAir asking them if they’d still like to continue with this plan or they have another proposal. Either way, AAI has the bank guarantee, and GoAir is put on cash-and-carry mode so the authorities have an upper hand here,” the official said.
Recently, BusinessLine had also reported that GoAir has raised ₹30 crore of working capital in June.
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