Opinion | The rescue plan for Jet Airways is touch-and-go

For Jet Airways (India) Ltd, it’s always only about one rupee.

As I wrote last month, the troubled full-service carrier needed to garner an additional 1 rupee per available seat kilometre to make up for its cost disadvantage against no-frills rivals. Cutthroat price competition denied it that opportunity, and now banks are picking up a majority stake—at a price of 1 rupee for 114 million shares.

The gamble, which seeks to avoid putting India’s oldest private airline into court-administered bankruptcy, was put to a shareholder vote on 21 February. Beyond that, the details of the rescue plan are fuzzy.