Jet Airways Insolvency: CoC Tells Supreme Court It Spent Rs 470 Crore Without Returns

Since the commencement of the resolution process of Jet Airways, Rs 470 crore has been spent towards the upkeep and maintenance of aircraft without any return on its investment, the committee of creditors informed the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

The Jet Aircraft Maintenance Welfare Association seconded the CoC and added that they too have not been paid their dues.

The committee has been incurring expenses amounting to Rs 23 crore every month, Additional Solicitor General N. Venkatraman, appearing for the CoC, told the court.

The Chief Justice of India, DY Chandrachud, adjourned the case when it was pointed out that similar matters pertaining to the recovery of dues from Jet Airways were already pending before the apex court and directed that all the matters be tagged together for a hearing.

Jet Airways went into insolvency after facing a severe funding crunch in 2019. The resolution plan submitted by the consortium of Murari Lal Jalan, a non-resident Indian, and Florian Fritsch of Kalrock Capital Partners Ltd. was approved two years later, in June 2021.

The Jalan-Kalrock consortium had 150 days, from Nov. 16, 2022, to May 15, 2023, to pay their dues of Rs 150 crore to State Bank of India, which is part of the monitoring committee responsible for the implementation of Jet Airways' resolution plan.

When the payment of dues was not done in time, the consortium approached the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal to restrain SBI from encashing the performance bank guarantees.

In May, the NCLAT observed that JKC was still in the process of implementing the resolution plan, and while SBI can invoke the performance bank guarantee, it cannot do so until the plan fails.

Subsequently, the appellate tribunal granted an extra three months to the consortium to pay the dues to SBI.