Fifty passengers began praying fervently, when the aircraft they were travelling in, started shuddering in bad weather, soon after it took off from Kochi airport yesterday.

Seven days after the Mangalore air crash that killed 158 persons, the memory returned to haunt passengers of a Jet Konnect flight 2734 that was headed towards Chennai from Kochi.

Jet Airways Konnect flight 2734 takes off from Kochi and heads towards Chennai. ILLUSTRATIONS/SAMEER PAWAR

Twenty minutes into the journey, due to rain and bad weather, the flight starts shaking

Panic-stricken passengers pray, hoping that the Mangalore crash would not be repeated

The ATR aircraft, small in size with 50 passengers, two crew members and pilot on board had just taken off, when it started raining and the airplane started shaking.

Eyewitnesses said almost all the panic-stricken passengers were praying, hoping that the Mangalore crash would not be repeated. Some of the passengers started reciting the verses from their prayer books.

“Twenty minutes into the journey, and the flight suddenly started shaking. The cabin crew asked us to tie our seat belts. The memories of the recent Mangalore air crash suddenly came to my mind and I got scared. I observed a lady passenger, who was reading the Bible and was in tears,” said Shriprada, a passenger.

“The situation was tense in the flight. After 15-20 minutes the turbulence stopped and the flight landed safely at the Chennai airport by 9.20 pm,” Shriprada added.

Sources in the Chennai Air Traffic Control (ATC) explained that the climate was bad and the pilot was unable to control the flight movement initially.

When contacted Jet Airways spokesperson did not respond to our calls.

The growth since June 2009 (since when the negative growth got reversed) was led by mainly by budget flying. The combined market share of pure LCCs (low-cost carriers) like IndiGo, SpiceJet, JetLite and Go Air is close to 40%. With Jet and Kingfisher now deploying almost 70-80% of their domestic fleet on budget brands like Jet Airways Konnect and Kingfisher Airlines Booking, the share of LCC is close to 70% now. National carrier Air India (domestic) with a 17.8% share is the only airline without a domestic LCC and now finds leading budget carrier IndiGo closely snapping at its heels.

The lean travel month of March saw passenger load factors of airlines going down from impressive 80-90% highs in the December to February. Big players saw their loads in the range of 74% (IndiGo) to 66.5% (AI-domestic). Pure LCCs enjoyed the highest loads with Jet and Kingfisher remaining above 70% due to a huge deployment of their planes on budget segment.

Flight 9W 2635 will depart New Delhi at 1015 hrs, arriving in Dehradun at 1115 hrs. Flight 9W 2636 will then depart Dehradun at 1145 hrs, arriving back in New Delhi at 1245 hrs.

According to Mr. Nikos Kardassis, CEO, Jet Airways, “We are delighted to add Dehradun to our network with the introduction of the new daily flights to the city from New Delhi. Besides being the capital of Uttarakhand and a very popular tourist destination, Dehradun is also one of the country’s leading educational centres and as such, there has been growing demand for enhanced air connectivity on this sector. We are confident that our new Jet Airways Konnect service will prove very popular with our guests.”

Around 50 international and domestic flights as well as nearly 100 trains were affected due to poor visibility, leaving scores stranded at the Indira Gandhi International Airport and the three main railway stations in the capital.

Road traffic was equally chaotic as arterial and small roads jammed with snail-paced vehicles, the frustrated motorists honking away. The situation got from bad to worse during peak office hours.

A Northern Railway spokesperson said that as of 11.30 a.m. as many as 25 trains to and from the capital were cancelled, 70 Delhi-bound trains were delayed and eight trains leaving Delhi had been rescheduled.

As of 1 p.m. at least 22 domestic flights were delayed while two were cancelled. Twelve international flights were delayed due to the dense fog, owing to which runway visibility dropped below the required 150 metres in the morning hours, the airport’s website said.

A massive jam on the Delhi-Noida-Delhi (DND) flyover blocked off traffic from the eastern suburb. It decongested after many hours.

“The toll gate at DND was closed for some time because of heavy traffic. I was stuck for over an hour,” complained Sarthak Mishra, who commutes from the Noida suburb to Delhi for work.

A traffic official blamed the congestion on an accident early Friday.

“A truck hit the divider in fog which led to a traffic standstill for hours. Carsbegan moving only at 1 p.m.,” a traffic police official said.

The general visibility in the city dropped to zero early Friday and remained below 50 metres till 10 a.m, when it recorded 100 meters. The condition improved only after 1 p.m.

Thousands of air and rail passengers had a difficult time as the fog disrupted train and flight services for hours in the capital. Many said they weren’t informed about cancellations, rescheduling and delays of flights and trains.

According to the Met department, the city will have to brace itself for severe fog conditions expected Saturday.

Here is a verbatim transcript of her comments on CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.

It comes as a huge relief for Jet Airways the market was waiting for this kind of deleveraging on the balance sheet of Jet Airways.

The CCEA has approved the QIP of Jet Airways for USD 400 million to the tune of about Rs 2000 crore. This was pending for many months. The proposal was struggling for three months on account purely that the Civil Aviation ministry had objected to the breaching of the FDI limit in the company.

On the back of that there was lot of to and fro and negative news had come in as far as their QIP was concerned, and it wasn’t allowed to go through.

The funds that they are planning to use that will be raised will be used to pare off their debt and cash infusion into their latest affair Jet Konnect.

Consolidated debt

As of now their debt-equity ratio is more than 10 times as of FY10. Their consolidated debt is about Rs 14,500 crore as of September’09 out of which Rs 10,300 crore is only the aircraft debt.

That is the kind of debt situation that they are sitting on right now and this equity infusion will come in as a huge relief for the company particularly as far as de-leveraging as far as the balance sheet is concerned.

If you do the math, the total dilution of 15-16% is expected and the holding of the principal promoter Naresh Goyal will shrink from about 80% to 42% post this particular QIP issue.

The current payment obligation that they have in the next quarter is of USD 330 million. Earlier, the FIPB had deferred Jet Airways plans for a long time. This comes as a relief as far as Jet Airways’ cash infusion is concerned.

Also they have other plans to deleverage their balance sheet along with leasing a couple of their aircrafts which will also help them gain some funds.

Airline companies are seeing a whole lot as far as cash flow is concerned and the only Achilles ’ heel for them has been the equity infusion into the company and the debt situation they are currently sitting on. Apart from that the entire demand scenario is picking up, load factors picking up and the cash flow situation is looking quite robust and even prices are seeing an upmove.

Analysts’ views

When we speak to analysts and the experts we get the feeling that the debt is the biggest concern in this sector. Although there is improvement in demand and sporadic movements as far as load factors are concerned, capacity is concerned, this is all very momentary.

So a lot of analysts are still not gung-ho about the position. We just had a brokerage who came out with a report saying although their call on the entire aviation sector was negative and although there is some improvement they are seeing as far as the demand picture is concerned, load factors are concerned, yet they are not quite positive until and unless the debt situation really gets cleaned up in the books of some of these companies like Kingfisher and Spice.

Jet Airways is a big deal for them and only post some of this cleaning up of balance sheet gets done, will they kind of reaffirm and believe more on the growth story for these companies.