Jet Airways India Ltd.’s fleet has shrunk by almost 90 percent as the cash-strapped airline struggles to find funds to operate, forcing the nation’s oldest surviving private airline to drastically curtail its scheduled flights amid a hunt for a new investor.
The carrier, once India’s biggest by market capitalization, was forced to ground 10 more jets after it failed to pay lease rentals on time, Jet said in a stock exchange filing Thursday. That means the carrier is now operating fewer than 20 planes, compared with a fleet of 124 as recently as January.
Jet Airways, which broke into the monopoly of state-run Air India Ltd. in the early 1990s, had successfully managed to hold its own in a tough market before a slew of budget airlines started offering ultra-low fares about a decade back.
