The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has tried to soothe public anxiety over Jet Airways’ condition by saying that it had cleared the airline’s schedule involving 41 aircraft for 603 domestic and 382 international flights a week. It, however, warned that “it is a dynamic situation and there may be further attrition in coming weeks.”

The DGCA statement was probably in response to a tweet by Suresh Prabhu, Minister for Civil Aviation in which he directed “the Ministry of Civil Aviation to hold an emergency meeting on the grounding of flights by Jet Airways. Advance booking, cancellation, refunds and safety issues if any. Asked him to get a report on Jet compliance issues from the DGCA.”

There has been an almost 71 per cent drop in Jet’s weekly flight schedule as compared to its heyday when, according to industry watchers, the airline operated over 2,100 services a week on its domestic network. The airline’s fleet has seen a 65 per cent decline from over 119 aircraft that it had earlier to the present strength of 41 aircraft.

Travel industry players also doubt whether Jet Airways will be able to operate the huge number of flights that the DGCA has cleared. The reason for this is that Jet Airways has a mixed fleet of widebody aircraft, which are normally used on long-haul international routes and hence it can operate only limited flights in a day.

Monitoring fares

The DGCA has also asked domestic airlines to monitor their fares. If the fares are said to be high or inching towards the higher category then the airlines have been asked to take steps to ensure that the public is not charged exorbitant rates.

Normally, an aircraft is divided into various categories from A to Z with the fares in the Z category being the lowest and A being the highest on the same route. The airlines used various artificial intelligence tools to ensure that as demand on a route increases the fares also increase.

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