Jet Airways heading for a crash-landing?

Bracing for a possible shuttering, Jet Airways Thursday grounded services across the Eastern and Northeastern markers and also suspended its international operations for a day, while 1o more planes were forced out of the fleet.

In related developments, its board met in Mumbai and discussed "operational" issues, while airlines' strategic partner Etihad Airways submitted initial bids for higher stake in the crippled carrier.

However, founder Naresh Goyal, who had also planned to participate in the bids and was expected to put in bids Thursday, did not do so till late evening, the sources said.

Goyal owns 50.1 percent in the airline, most of which is pledged with lenders. Goyal had last month agreed to pare down his stake to 25.5 percent for an emergency fund of Rs 1,500 crore from the lenders, and leave the board but the process is yet to be completed due to procedural delays.

The government has tried to rescue the airline, fearing job more losses ahead of the hustings, which has seen the banks led by state-run State Bank agreeing to bail out the career by acquiring majority stake.

In the eventuality of Jet going down, it will be the seventh airline to shutter operations in the past five years as operators like Air Pegasus, Air Costa, Air Carnival, Air Odisha, Air Deccan, and Zoom Air went belly up.

Moreover, the airline informed the exchanges late in the evening that it was forced to ground 10 more planes due to non-payment of lease rentals.

"Jet flights to London, Amsterdam and Paris from Mumbai, New Delhi and Bengaluru scheduled for April 12 are cancelled for operational reasons," said an airline source close to the development.

The airline will also not operate the Bengaluru- Amsterdam-Bengaluru flight on April 13, the source added.

"All Jet operations to and from the Eastern and Northeastern states are suspended till further notice.

Following this, there are no Jet flights to and from Kolkata, Patna, Guwahati and other airports in the region," a travel industry source told

(This article has not been edited by Zeebiz editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)