Jet Airways suspends services to 13 international routes till end-April
Mumbai: Jet Airways, on the verge of going belly-up, has suspended operations on as many as 13 more international routes till end-April even as it grounded seven more planes due to non-payment of rentals, taking the number of such aircraft to 54.
Besides, the airline has also reduced frequencies on seven other overseas routes, mostly from Delhi and Mumbai, according to airline sources.
"... an additional seven aircraft including two planes of JetLite, have been grounded due to non-payment of amounts outstanding to lessors under their respective lease agreements," the airline said in a filing to the stock exchanges late evening Friday.
The company said that as mentioned earlier, it is actively engaged with all its aircraft lessors and is regularly providing them with updates on the efforts taken to improve the liquidity.
Earlier, sources said routes where services have been temporarily withdrawn include Pune-Singapore (seven a week), which was launched with much fanfare late last December, and Pune-Abu Dhabi (seven flights a week).
Jet Airways has already suspended services on the Mumbai-Manchester route.
Gasping for funds and no bailout on the horizon, the Naresh Goyal-controlled airline has now reduced its operations to one-fourth from over 600 daily flights earlier, with just one-third of its 119 fleet being operational.
The airline has discontinued services from Delhi to Abu Dhabi (nine a week), Dammam (14 weekly), Dhaka (11), Hong Kong and Riyadh (seven each a week) up to April 30, said the airline source.
Besides, the airline has also suspended services on the Bangalore-Singapore route, where it flies twice daily, till April 30.
The flights which have been suspended from Mumbai for this period include services to Abu Dhabi (12 weekly), Bahrain (4-7 weekly), and Dammam (14 weekly). These services will remain suspended till April 30, as per the source.
Similarly, flights on the Mumbai-Hong Kong (7 weekly) route will also not be operated between March 23 and April 30, while the Kolkata-Dhaka services have also been suspended till April 30.
In addition to this, services from Delhi and Mumbai to Kathmandu, Bangkok, Doha, Kuwait and Singapore have been also reduced significantly.
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Banks to clear cheques within few hours from Oct 4: RBI
Mumbai, Aug 13 (PTI): The RBI will introduce a new mechanism from October 4 for clearance of cheques within hours of being presented to banks, reducing the current time period of up to two working days.
Cheques will be scanned, presented, and passed in a few hours and on a continuous basis during business hours. The clearing cycle will be reduced from the present T+1 days to a few hours.
Cheque Truncation System (CTS) currently processes cheques with a clearing cycle of up to two working days.
To improve the efficiency of cheque clearing and reduce settlement risk for participants, and to enhance customer experience, the RBI has decided to transition CTS from the current approach of batch processing to continuous clearing with 'on-realisation-settlement'.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has issued a circular for introduction of Continuous Clearing and Settlement on Realisation in CTS.
"It has been decided to transition CTS to continuous clearing and settlement on realisation in two phases. Phase 1 shall be implemented on October 4, 2025 and Phase 2 on January 3, 2026," it said.
There will be a single presentation session from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM.
Cheques received by the branches shall be scanned and sent to the clearing house by the banks immediately and continuously during the presentation session, RBI said.
"For every cheque presented, the drawee bank shall generate either positive confirmation (for honoured cheques) or negative confirmation (for dishonoured cheques)," it said.
During Phase 1 (from October 4, 2025 to January 2, 2026), drawee banks will be required to confirm (positively/negatively) cheques presented on them, latest by the end of the confirmation session (7:00 PM), else those will be deemed to have been approved and included for settlement.
In Phase 2 (from January 3, 2026), the item expiry time of cheques shall be changed to T+3 clear hours.
Giving an example, the RBI said the cheques received by drawee banks between 10:00 AM and 11:00 AM will have to be confirmed positively or negatively by them by 2:00 PM (3 hours from 11:00 AM).
Cheques for which confirmation is not provided by the drawee bank in the prescribed 3 hours shall be treated as deemed approved and included for settlement at 2:00 PM.
RBI further said that on completion of settlement, the clearing house will release the information of positive and negative confirmations to the presenting bank.
"The presenting bank shall process the same and release the payment to the customers immediately, but not later than 1 hour from successful settlement, subject to usual safeguards," it said.
RBI directed banks to make their customers adequately aware of the changes in the cheque clearing process.
Banks have also been asked to be in readiness to participate in continuous clearing in CTS on the prescribed dates.
