Aviation

Evacuation slide inflated as Air India hostess botched pilot’s order

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According to Indian News Paper Times of India reports An Air India commander took the unusual step of stopping a taxiing aircraft at Heathrow to return a cellphone to an engineer who had left it behind after readying the aircraft for departure.What transpired on the London-Ahmedabad flight last month was a series of incredible decisions.

“The commander informed the ground staff to ask the engineer to reach the aircraft and collect the phone,” said a source.

He instructed the cabin crew-in-charge to ‘recycle the door’, open it and throw the phone, which could be safely embedded in a pillow, conscripted from the passenger cabin for the mission.‘Recycle the door’ means to change the mode it is set in.

Aircraft doors are either set in automatic mode (‘armed’ in aviation parlance) or manual (‘unarmed’).

Before departure, the commander gives an ‘arm the doors’ or ‘doors to automatic’ instruction to the crew.

When she opened the door, the slide inflated and fell into position, ready for an evacuation. But instead of panicky passengers, the only person standing at the door was the rather shocked crew-in-charge, holding a pillow stuffed with suddenly not-so-precious cargo.

The flight’s departure had to be delayed. “The engineering team had to disconnect the slide, deflate it, and fold and pack it into the cargo compartment,” the source said. AI-176, which had started taxiing at 2pm, finally departed at 3.46pm.

Aviation

No More Jet Airways. Supreme Court Says “No Choice”, Orders Liquidation

Jet Airways was once one of India’s leading airlines, known for its service and extensive network. Founded in 1993, it served millions of passengers, connecting cities across India and international destinations.

However, since grounding its flights in April 2019, Jet Airways has struggled to navigate financial turbulence, leading to years of efforts to revive the airline and return it to the skies.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court ordered the liquidation of Jet Airways, citing “no choice” but to take this decisive step after the resolution plan failed to meet creditor obligations. The court invoked its extraordinary powers under Article 142, which allows it to make orders for “complete justice” in any case, overriding previous tribunal rulings.

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The Jalan-Kalrock Consortium (JKC), which had won the bid to revive Jet, faced criticism for not fulfilling payment commitments to creditors, which included major banks like the State Bank of India and Punjab National Bank.

The Supreme Court’s ruling pointed to “peculiar and alarming” issues surrounding the resolution plan’s implementation, leading to its conclusion that liquidation was the only feasible outcome.

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Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, alongside Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, emphasized that while liquidation should be a last resort, it was necessary as the resolution plan was “no longer capable of implementation.”

In line with this decision, the court ordered that the ₹200 crore already infused by JKC be forfeited and directed the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) in Mumbai to appoint a liquidator to oversee the process.

JKC, a partnership between Murari Jalan, a UAE-based Indian entrepreneur, and Florian Fritsch, a Jet shareholder through Kalrock Capital Partners Limited, had taken ownership of Jet Airways two years after it was grounded. The consortium’s inability to fulfill its financial obligations has now led to this final verdict, marking the end of an era for Jet Airways in India.