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Jet Airways, under its new owners – the Jalan-Kalrock consortium – will conduct its last set of proving flights on Tuesday. Approximately five hours of flying and three landings were recorded on Sunday, when the first set of proving flights took place.
This means another set of two-odd landings and approximately five hours of flying remain for the airlines to complete its proving flight schedule.
Proving flights are a critical step for Jet Airways to re-validate its air operator certificate (AOC) and start commercial operations. The carrier was grounded in April 2019, when the company, under its previous owners, went bankrupt.
“The next set of proving flights are due on Tuesday either along the Delhi–Bengaluru–Delhi or Delhi–Hyderabad–Delhi routes. A call is yet to be taken,” sources at the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), India’s aviation regulator, told BusinessLine.
In a proving flight, the airline staff must behave in a way identical to when they carry out commercial operations so as to prove their preparedness and safety standards — readiness of check-in-counter staff, engineers, pilots and cabin crew performing their duties. Passengers include management-level personnel of the airlines and DGCA officials.
Jet Airways, it may be recalled, has already covered procedural issues like carrying a test flight (between Hyderabad and Delhi on May 5) and obtained security clearances from the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Previous proving flights
The airlines was offered Delhi–Mumbai, Delhi–Hyderabad and Delhi–Bengaluru routes, of which flights on the Delhi–Mumbai route (flying time of over two hours, one way) were carried out on Sunday.
Sunday’s flight, which had 16 passengers on board – included two pilots, four cabin crew members, office-holders of Jet Airways (that included Director - Engineering, Director - Flight Safety) and senior DGCA officials.
DGCA sources said a flight was scheduled to return to Delhi (Delhi–Mumbai-Delhi) was asked to be diverted to Ahmedabad, when the aircraft was hovering over Rajasthan. The diversion, DGCA officials said, is a regular exercise during proving flights to check for the carrier’s readiness in case of such a scenario (of diversion or emergency landing).
“All (things went) well,” a DGCA official said on Sunday’s proving flight exercise.
For Tuesday, Jet Airways will prepare a similar duty-roster comprising two pilots, four cabin crew and it will have a set of passengers that include the airlines’ “office-holders” and DGCA officials. The number of passengers have not yet been decided on. The airlines will use a Boeing 737 (registration number VT SXE), the same one it used on Sunday.
When contacted, Jet Airways management refused to comment on the matter.
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