Banks finally accept India’s oldest private-sector airline Jet Airways is dead

Two months after India’s oldest private-sector airline grounded its last plane, and with even a water-bottling firm threatening to drag the carrier into bankruptcy, a consortium of lenders led by State Bank of India can finally stop pretending that a white knight is coming.

With the insolvency tribunal taking Jet Airways India Ltd. under its wing on Thursday, there may be one more abortive attempt to sell it whole. But now that lessors have taken most of the fleet, employees have all but given up on back wages, and the country’s aviation market has moved on, liquidation is the most practical solution. Little will be recovered from financial and operational creditors’ claims, which may add up to more than 140 billion rupees ($2 billion), according to local media reports. Jet, as Monty Python might have observed, isn’t exactly a Norwegian blue, pining for the fjords. It’s a dead parrot. Banks killed it with kindness.