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Jet Airways passengers may have to suffer more if their flight is cancelled with full-service carriers such as Air India and Vistara having snapped cordial agreements with the debt-laden airline.
Air India and Vistara have terminated ‘flight interruption manifest (FIM) agreement’ and ‘interline ticketing agreement facility’, respectively, with the airline.
Aircraft grounded
The development comes at a time when lessors have been grounding aircraft of the Naresh Goyal-led airline.
According to the airline’s website, they have 123 aircraft, of which, in the past three days, 15 were grounded on account of non-payment to lessors. The airline had to cancel several flights due to the same.
According to an internal letter signed by Madhu Mathen, General Manager (Marketing), Air India, which was reviewed by BusinessLine: “With immediate effect and till further notice, Jet Airways and JetLite documents (including FIM and endorsed/involuntary rerouted/rebooked/exchanged/re-issued documents) are not to be accepted for travel on Air India flights.”
An FIM agreement is a cordial understanding between two airlines where in situations where a schedule change happens, the alliance airline accommodates those stranded passengers on their airline.
The FIM acts like a substitute ticket for the stranded passenger. As part of this, the affected airline reimburses the said amount of the ticket to the other airline.
Meanwhile, according to sources, Vistara has terminated its interline ticketing agreement facility with Jet Airways.
Using this facility, Jet Airways could book their passengers on a Vistara flight at a pre-determined price. However, according to a company source, this agreement has been called off “partially because of non-payments of dues”. The source also said the deal was getting unviable because of the grounding of the aircraft.
According to media reports, Vistara has an FIM agreement with the airline, too. Clarifying the same, a company spokesperson said: “Vistara has not had any seat-sharing of FIM agreement with Jet Airways. An interline ticketing facility, however, has been terminated for internal reasons.”
“It’s a mutual agreement, if their aircraft have been grounded and they have discontinued several routes, we are not going to be able to use their aircraft as well; it becomes a costly affair for us, too, and thus, it was decided till further notice to terminate the agreement,” the source added.
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