​Jet Airways Hopes To Turn Around In 18 Months

Although Jet Airways’ stock took a beating on its record loss, India’s second biggest carrier said it would try and return to profit in 18 months.

Jet posted a loss of Rs 2,153.57 crore for the January-March period, up more than four times from the year-ago period.

Annual losses surged more than fivefold to Rs 4,129.76 crore.

According to analysts' estimates, Jet’s consolidated net worth fell to a negative Rs 4,174.86 crore, from Rs 1,827.71 crore in the previous year.

In a call to analysts, Jet's vice-president of finance, Ravichandran Narayan, said that the airline would aim to be out of the red by the middle of FY2016-17.

Jet will pull out of loss-making domestic routes, add short-haul international flights, replace bigger planes with narrow-bodied aircraft, reconfigure planes and hike up ancillary revenues, he added.

The airline will have a uniform configuration on all its Boeing 737s, which will help in higher plane utilisation and operational flexibility, said Abhijit Das Gupta, senior vice-president for network planning at Jet.

He also mentioned that Jet had replaced its single daily wide-body-operated flights to Singapore with double dailies, operated by smaller planes.

But according to industry experts, the airline is unlikely to make a net profit in 1.5 years and may just come close to cutting its cash losses.

Ravishankar Gopalakrishnan, Jet's previous acting CEO, said that cheaper loans would help the airline save interest costs by $30 million a year.