The long descent: how Jet Airways is being sold off, bit by bit

In a warehouse at Mahipalpur, on the road out of Delhi airport, sat a Maruti Alto LXI, registration DL3CAW7262. On November 7 last year the liquidator of Jet Airways (India) Ltd put it up for auction at a reserve price of ₹43,000 — less than a month’s salary for the cabin crew who once worked for the company that owned it.

It is the cheapest item in the estate of an airline that, at its height, flew more than 300 flights a day to 74 destinations and carried more than one in five passengers in Indian skies.

The Alto sold, apparently. It never appeared in an auction notice again. Most of what surrounded it in that warehouse has not been so lucky.

From 300 flights a day to a survey number

Jet Airways began as an air taxi operator in 1993 and grew into India’s largest private full-service carrier. It listed in 2005, absorbed Air Sahara in 2007, ran a hub at Mumbai and a European foothold at Amsterdam, and by February 2016 held a 21.2 per cent share of domestic passengers. In 2017 it employed just over 16,000 people. In 2017-18, its last full reported year, it turned over about ₹25,200 crore — and lost ₹630 crore doing it.

That was the shape of the problem. A full-service cost base, a fleet part-owned and part-leased, and a fare war with low-cost rivals that the balance sheet could not absorb. Fuel and lease payments came due monthly; the margin to pay them did not.

On April 17, 2019, having run out of cash for lessors, lenders and staff alike, Jet Airways stopped flying. Insolvency proceedings began that June, on applications from State Bank of India and two operational creditors, Gaggar Enterprises Pvt Ltd and Shaman Wheels Pvt Ltd.

For five years the airline existed as a resolution plan. The Jalan-Kalrock consortium won it; the aircraft stayed parked; the relaunch never came. On November 7, 2024 the Supreme Court set the plan aside in State Bank of India & Ors vs the consortium of Murari Lal Jalan and Florian Fritsch. On November 26 the National Company Law Tribunal’s Mumbai bench ordered liquidation. Satish Kumar Gupta was appointed liquidator, and the airline stopped being a company to be saved and became an inventory to be sold.

The ledger he inherited: secured financial creditors claiming ₹15,557.82 crore across 26 claims, of which ₹12,950.95 crore stands admitted, plus ₹1,902.92 crore of unsecured financial creditor claims still under verification, as recorded in his stakeholder filing of May 16, 2025.

Against that: ₹966 crore, and a lot of repetition

Since May 2025 the liquidator has issued 101 auction notices in Jet Airways’ name, filed with the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India. Added together, they carry reserve prices of ₹1,313.37 crore.

But they do not describe 101 things. They describe roughly 47. Fifty-four of the 101 notices are re-offerings of assets nobody bought the first time, or the second, or the third. Counted properly — each asset once, at the highest price it was ever offered at — the estate on the block comes to ₹966.32 crore. Take the notices at face value and you overstate it by ₹347.05 crore.

Thirteen cars account for 46 of those 101 notices.

The thirteen cars

The arithmetic here is unusually clean, and it tells the story of the whole liquidation in miniature.

On September 4, 2025, the liquidator offered “13 cars located at Mahipalpur warehouse” as one lot: reserve price ₹57,11,000, auction October 6. Nobody came.

On November 7 the cars were split up and offered one by one — an Audi A6, three Honda Citys, three Swift Dzires, a Maruti SX4, a Maruti Eeco, a Swaraj Mazda mini truck, a Mahindra Bolero, and the Alto. Their thirteen reserve prices add up to exactly ₹57,11,000. The same cars, the same total, sliced thinner.

Most did not sell. In March 2026 they went up as a lot again, now described as “movable assets — vehicles”, at ₹51,39,900 — precisely 90 per cent of the September figure. Then individually again on May 4. Then again on June 26. Then again on July 20.

Ten of the thirteen have now been offered four separate times, each ending about a third below where it started:

Vehicle	Nov 2025	May 2026	Jun 2026	Jul 2026
Audi A6 35 TFS DL3CCN6403	₹21,67,500	₹17,55,675	₹15,80,108	₹14,22,097
Honda City MH02EK4299	₹4,97,000	₹4,02,570	₹3,62,313	₹3,26,082
Honda City MH02EE0950 / 0955 / 0961 (each)	₹4,23,000	₹3,42,630	₹3,08,367	₹2,77,530
Swift Dzire MH02EK5144 / 5146 / 5147 (each)	₹3,83,500	₹3,10,635	₹2,79,572	₹2,51,615
Maruti SX4 DL3CBU5685	₹1,95,000	₹1,57,950	₹1,42,155	₹1,27,940
Maruti Eeco DL2CAQ4409	₹1,66,000	₹1,34,460	₹1,21,014	₹1,08,913

The cuts run to a rhythm — about 19 per cent at the first re-offering, then 10 per cent each time after, consistent with the reduction permitted under Regulation 33 read with Schedule I of the IBBI (Liquidation Process) Regulations, 2016. The Audi that opened at ₹21.67 lakh is now ₹14.22 lakh and still unsold. An executive car, four times to market in nine months, marked down by a third, and nobody in the country wants it at the price.

Two vehicles are absent from that table. The Mahindra Bolero at ₹83,500 and the Alto at ₹43,000 were offered once, in November 2025, and never again.

What is actually worth something

The biggest asset in the estate never flew. It is the second floor of Godrej BKC, Plot C-68, G Block, Bandra Kurla Complex — about 52,202 sq ft of carpet area, 83,524 sq ft saleable, and 70 car parking spaces in one of the most expensive office districts in the country. It went up on May 15, 2025 at a reserve price of ₹335.24 crore.

The aircraft come next. Five have been notified for sale, carrying ₹522.35 crore between them: two Boeing 777-300ERs, VT-JET and VT-JEU, and three narrowbodies — 737-800s VT-JBL and VT-JBG, and 737-900 VT-JGD.

The widebodies were the one unambiguous success. Offered on February 22 at ₹171.80 crore and ₹184.95 crore, they sold at the March 27 auction for ₹309.25 crore and ₹258.93 crore — ₹568.18 crore against a reserve of ₹356.76 crore, a premium of about 60 per cent. The buyers were Ace Aviation XIV and XV, part of Malta-based Challenge Group. Fifteen-year-old widebodies, parked in Delhi since 2019, turned out to be the only part of Jet Airways with a competitive market.

Strip out the BKC floor and the five aircraft — ₹857.59 crore — and everything else the airline owns amounts to ₹108.73 crore. Ground power units and hydraulic jacks. Baggage trollies. A Toyota tow tug at ₹15.64 lakh. An air conditioning unit at ₹73.21 lakh. Fire extinguishers and trollies at ₹60,763. Uniforms, shirts, footwear and rainwear at ₹4,96,560. Printing and stationery, first offered at ₹99,495, re-offered at ₹89,545.

The catering assets have walked down the same staircase as the cars: ₹4.28 crore in March, ₹3.85 crore in May, ₹3.19 crore in June. Meal carts have been rebundled so many times — as “catering meal carts”, as three lots of “Atlas meal carts”, as three lots identified only by asset ID, as “catering and admin — meal carts” — that they can no longer be reliably matched between rounds.

Two larger lots are still open, both described simply as inventory: ₹49.57 crore, auction July 27, and aircraft parts at ₹21.44 crore, auction August 10.

And there is a 200-sq-m residential plot, identified in the record by nothing but a survey number, 36/A/PLOT/19. It was offered in November 2025 at ₹12.50 lakh. It was offered again in April at ₹12.50 lakh. On July 23 it went up a third time, at ₹11.25 lakh, for an auction on August 25.

Against ₹12,950.95 crore of admitted secured debt, the entire estate — offices, aircraft, trollies, cutlery, the Audi, the plot — is on the market for ₹966.32 crore. Roughly seven and a half paise in the rupee, before a single lot fails to sell.

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