Travel question: Should I hold out hope for my Jet Airways booking?

Have a question? Ask our expert Simon Calder

Mumbai: the carrier was once a solid choice for flights to India (iStock)

Q I am booked to fly on Jet Airways from Heathrow in a few days. As you reported, the airline grounded all its flights at the weekend. I have spent hours hoping to speak to someone from Jet but no one picked up the phone. I feel I have no choice but to make alternative arrangements as I am due to be flying in the next few days. What do you advise?

Angela

A Sadly, the omens for Jet Airways do not look auspicious, and in your position I would make alternative plans as soon as possible.

By way of background: for a quarter-century Jet Airways provided high quality domestically within India and, more recently, internationally. It had three flights a day connecting Heathrow with Mumbai, and another to Delhi.

I use the past tense advisedly because I cannot see good long-term prospects for the airline, which has been struggling financially and has had most of its aircraft repossessed by leasing companies.

All international flights were grounded “for one day only” on Friday. The airline told me: “The airline’s management and its key stakeholders, including its consortium of lenders, continue to work closely towards resolving the current situation.”

Later on Friday Jet Airways said it was ending international flights up to and including Monday 15 April.

But the Jet Airways website told an even worse story. Test bookings I made indicate that Jet Airways has blocked sales of its flights from Heathrow to Delhi and Mumbai up to and including 18 April.

While the airline claims to be rebooking passengers on other flights, or providing refunds “as the situation warrants”, all the information I have seen suggests most travellers are facing frustration.

Personally I would not trust Jet Airways to rebook your journey. So go ahead and find alternatives, in the expectation that you will soon get an alert that your original Jet Airways flights have been cancelled. You can use this to claim back the cost of the trip from your credit card issuer. If you have taken out scheduled airline failure insurance, you should be able to claim the cost of the replacement flights.

Every day our travel correspondent Simon Calder tackles a reader’s question. Just email yours to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder