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Jet Airways, under its new promoters—the Jalan-Kalrock consortium, will carry out the first proving flight on Sunday (May 15) between Delhi and Mumbai and back to Delhi, officials of India’s aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) told BusinessLine.
Critical for restarting flights
Proving flights are a critical step for Jet Airways to re-validate its air operator certificate (AOC) and restart commercial flights. Jet Airways flights were grounded in April 2019. The airlines has stuck to its deadline of launching commercial operations by the July – September quarter of this year. “The first proving flight for Jet is scheduled on Sunday on the Delhi – Mumbai – Delhi route,” Arun Kumar, DG, DGCA, said.
In a proving flight, the airline staff are required to behave in a fashion identical to when they carry out commercial operations to prove preparedness and safety standards. This involves check-in-counter staff, engineers, pilots, and cabin crew performing their duties. Passengers generally include operations level and management level officials of the airlines and also DGCA officials.
Jet Airways needs five-odd proving flights, or 10-odd hours of flying for re-validation of its AOC. Its procedure for proving flights are expected to be completed by May 17.
According to senior DGCA officials, different routes that have been offered for proving flights include Delhi – Mumbai, Delhi – Hyderabad and Delhi – Bengaluru, among others.
Jet Airways, it may be recalled, has already covered procedural issues like operating a test flight (between Hyderabad and Delhi on May 5) and obtained the security clearances from the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Preparations
For Sunday’s proving flight, Jet Airways have reportedly prepared two set of rosters which include two pilots and four all-female cabin crew.
On April 26, the official twitter handle of Jet Airways had shared a picture of the all-female cabin crew who will take part in the proving flight operations. Along with a picture of the crew, the tweet said, “The crew who will be part of creating history as they prepare to operate our proving flights soon. With the classic move that was pioneered by Jet Airways!”
Apart from DGCA officials, passengers on board are supposed to include “post holders” of Jet Airways that include its Director (Engineering), Director (Flight Safety) and so on.
The airlines will use a Boeing 737 (VT – SXE) aircraft. The aircraft, which was previously operated by Jet Airways - under its old management headed by Naresh Goyal - was subsequently leased out to SpiceJet. The DGCA officials say, there are no specific concerns on the aircraft and its safety.
In an email to employees, Sanjiv Kapoor, CEO, Jet Airways, has reportedly asked employees to focus on certain principles; while it also mentions that the aircraft order, placed by the carrier, will be announced after revalidation of AOC.
When contacted, Jet Airways management refused to comment on the matters.
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