The Irish lessor ACG Aircraft is taking the insolvent airline Go First to court because the aircraft owner believes that important components have been removed from at least two Airbus A320neos without consent.

On May 2, 2023, Go First's flight operations had to be suspended because the company ran out of financial resources. Insolvency proceedings have also been filed. Since then, the company has been trying to get back into the air, but has not succeeded so far. The Indian low-cost airline primarily sees the cause of the bankruptcy in supply issues from Pratt&Whitney, but the US company did not let the allegation sit without comment, but publicly launched a retaliation and claimed that Go First a long history of late payments have.

As a direct result of the bankruptcy, numerous lessors have reclaimed their machines and have already "collected" a large part of them. Some of these are already in use with other airlines, i.e. new lessees. However, not all lessors simply got hold of their property, because ACG Aircraft Leasing is confronted with the problem that at least two Airbus A320neo are not airworthy at all due to the removal of numerous components.

This is one of the reasons why they went to court in Delhi and presented numerous photos and documents showing missing parts as evidence before the Supreme Court. And the list is a long one: for example, the two A320neo are missing emergency slides, at least one sidestick controller and engine blades. This means that the machines cannot take off for safety reasons. A few smaller components are also missing. The lessor suspects that these may have been unlawfully removed and reinstalled as spare parts in other machines.

In any case, they want the property back airworthy and are therefore suing in court to have Go First make the affected Airbus A320neo airworthy and then return it to ACG, or alternatively pay the costs for the repair and the additional purchase of required components in the course of the return to the Lessor. However, it is questionable whether Go First has sufficient funds to be able to settle this or whether enough can be seized from the insolvency estate. In extreme cases, the lessor would not only be compensated for the property, but could also be left with the costs of legal intervention in the event of a victory in court, because if there is nothing left to sell in a bankruptcy, there is no money that can be given to creditors could be distributed.

It is not an isolated case for lessors to be able to obtain the surrender of their aircraft in court. However, there are significantly more cases in terms of official deregistration, because according to a report by the Times of India, many lessors have applied to the civil aviation authority for deletion from the register since the bankruptcy. A total of 54 aircraft are affected, which the owners in India want to have officially deregistered in order to have them re-registered elsewhere. This usually happens in preparation for the fact that these are to be handed over to a new lessee after a technical inspection.