Someone Bought Vijay Mallya's Personal Jet, Just To Rip It Apart And Sell It For Scrap!

Years after his Kingfisher Airlines crashed from its once glamorous position, Vijay Mallya's personal 11-seater jet, an HS 125 - 700B is being ripped to pieces so that its metal can be sold for scrap. It was auctioned off by the Mumbai International Airport Private Limited, and bought for 22 lakhs by Kurla based company Silent Enterprises.

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Silent Enterprises aims to to sell the jet's parts as scrap metal, and began the dismantling on April 6. The jet will be completely dismantled in the next few days. An airport supervisor told Mid-Day: ¡°We are currently dismantling the engine of the mid-sized jet, which is the most difficult part to dismantle. Though we have been working on the aircraft for eight days now, we will need at least four more days to complete the work. We expect to get 6.5 tonnes of scrap metal from the jet.¡±

Another shift supervisor told Mid-Day: ¡°It gets difficult to work in the afternoon, but the workers maintain their shift timings. The parts of the aircraft, once dismantled, are taken to Khairani Road in Kurla, where the scrap yard is located, and dumped there.¡± The 30 year old jet initially belonged to the Oberoi group, before getting acquired by Mallya's United Spirits in 2005.

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Kingfisher Airlines was forced to ground the plane after they couldn't pay suppliers and airports. Mumbai International Airport invited bids for the aircraft in December 2014. A senior airport official told Mid-Day: MIAL had sold the aircraft for Rs 22 lakh to Silent Enterprises located on Khairani Road. The dismantling work began eight days ago and will be completed in a week.¡±

Kingfisher owed dues of 53 crore to MIAL, and after serving two notices, the airport siezed the airline¡¯s seven aircrafts. Kingfisher used about 19,000 sq ft at the Mumbai airport, sharing this space with national carrier Air India, but was kicked out for not being able to pay rent. In its glory days, the airline operated close to 400 domestic and international flights daily from airports across India.

With inputs from TOI