A crisis-hit Jet Airways, a major Indian international airline, denies grounding its aircraft and cancelling some of its flights due to financial problems with aircraft lessors.

Jet Airways confirmed to Aviation Voice that the ongoing minor disruption in its network operations due to cancellation of a few of its flights is of a temporary nature.

According to the statement, the cancellations were “necessitated due to a scheduled termination of an aircraft lease and to carry out an engine normalization exercise”.

The airline expects to have its temporarily grounded aircraft “to rejoin the scheduled operations on Friday i.e. 01st February, 2019”.

Media reports revealed Jet Airways having delay in payments to aircraft lessors which initiated actions to take the planes back. Therefore, the airline confirmed that it is “actively engaged with all its aircraft lessors, and has been regularly providing updates on the efforts undertaken by the Company to improve its liquidity”.

“Aircraft lessors have been supportive of the Company’s efforts in this direction and no Jet Airways aircraft have been grounded today due to an indefinite grounding demand by an aircraft lessor”, the statement provided.

Jet Airways encountered numerous troubles after reporting massive losses in 2018. Reportedly, the airline owes money to pilots, lessors, banks and vendors. These occurred to such reasons as rising oil prices, tough competition on the Indian market, and other.

Nevertheless, the airline confirmed that its “key stakeholders are actively engaged towards finalization of the Resolution Plan. Jet Airways is confident of successfully resolving the current challenging situation”.