209 slots vacated by Jet Airways are lying unused at 31 airports: Govt

A total of 209 slots vacated by the Jet Airways are lying unused at 31 airports across the country, according to the data shared by Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri in the Lok Sabha on Thursday.

A slot is a date and time at which an airlines aircraft is permitted to depart or arrive at an airport.

The airports in Chennai have 34 unused slots, Indore 18, Guwahati 12 and Ahmedabad have 8 slots, the minister said in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha.

While Lucknow airport has 12 such slots, the airports in Jodhpur, Pune and Vadodara, have 10 slots each that are lying unused after being vacated by Jet Airways. At the airport in Kolkata, eight slots vacated by the beleaguered airline are currently lying unused, according to the data.

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After the airline ran out of funds, it had shut down its operations on April 17 this year which lead to a sudden rise in domestic and international airfares.

Consequently, the central government decided to temporarily allocate the slots as well as international flying rights of Jet Airways to other airlines who could start new flights immediately and fill the supply gap.

A certain number of slots vacated by Jet Airways are lying unused at airports in Allahabad, Amritsar, Aurangabad, Bagdogra, Bhopal, Bhuj, Chandigarh, Coimbatore, Dehradun, Goa, Imphal, Jaipur and Khajuraho, the data presented by the minister in Lok Sabha showed.

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Moreover, some slots are lying unused at airports in Calicut, Leh, Mangalore, Port Blair, Rajkot, Srinagar, Trivandrum, Udaipur and Varanasi, as per the data.