Aviation

Southwest Sends $5,000 Cheques To Passengers On Accident Flight

WASHINGTON: Southwest Airlines Co confirmed Friday it has sent $5,000 cheques to passengers aboard a flight that made an emergency landing this week after an engine failed, killing a passenger.

The airline confirmed news reports from passengers it had sent the cheques along with $1,000 travel vouchers. “We can confirm the communication and gesture are authentic and heartfelt,” the company said in a brief statement on Friday.

The CFM56 jet engine on Southwest flight 1380 blew apart over Pennsylvania on Tuesday, about 20 minutes after the Dallas-bound flight left New York’s LaGuardia Airport with 149 people on board. The engine debris shattered a window on the Boeing 737 plane, killing a passenger – the first death in a US airline accident since 2009. The plane made an emergency landing in Philadelphia.

The Federal Aviation Administration said late on Wednesday it was working to quickly finalise an airworthiness directive within the next two weeks that had been proposed in August 2017 after a similar engine failure in a Southwest plane in 2016, which it said would apply to 220 engines.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators on the scene were expected to wrap up their work in Philadelphia on Saturday, the agency said on Friday.

Southwest said after the incident that it was accelerating its existing engine inspection programme “out of an abundance of caution” and expected to complete it over the next 30 days.

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.