Ram Charan’s Trujet Grounded!

Mega hero Ram Charan ventured into the aviation business in 2015 with Trujet airlines which is a low cost regional carrier. The pandemic played a spoilsport in Trujet’s business and on Wednesday night all the aircrafts of the carrier were grounded.

In a statement, Trujet said the operations have been temporarily hampered because of various administrative and technical reasons and will resume operations at short notice. Contrary to the statement of Trujet, the main reason behind suspension of services is mounting losses. As per data revealed in Parliament, TruJet recorded an operating loss of Rs 143 crore for the financial year 2021 while the operating loss stood at Rs 10.1 crore in 2020 and Rs 17.56 crore in 2019.

Last year, the CEO, CFO and CCO of Trujet resigned but a new CFO was recently appointed and from the media reports we hear that the carrier has not paid full salaries to its employees for the last couple of months now.

Trujet entered the Indian aviation sector under Regional Connectivity Scheme – UDAN. The government of India provided subsidies to the airlines in order to encourage common man to fly the skies. But with the subsidies of UDAN ending, the regional carriers found it difficult to survive and the pandemic made things even worse.

The downfall of Trujet will hugely benefit other operators in the business. The IndiGo airlines which is the prime leader in private carriers, will look to take up Trujet slots, routes and also the aircrafts just in case Trujet’s talks with investors fail. SpiceJet is also looking at Trujet vacancies.