NEW DELHI: Crisis-ridden Jet Airways has grounded 15 more aircraft. The airline had on Tuesday afternoon told DGCA, which is monitoring the situation on a daily basis, that it was flying 28 planes. Then late on Tuesday, it told BSE about the grounding of 15 more planes. Even after this latest grounding, an airline spokesman said Jet was flying "about 30" planes. The situation is worsening due to delay in infusion of emergency funds.The airline, which once had 124 planes, now has a barely double digit fleet. Operating a highly truncated schedule, Jet Airways has now told its Boeing 737 pilots that they may take “long break/sabbatical” without pay up to September. The move comes after Jet sent all its expensive expat pilots on furloughs, or long leaves, without pay last week. Meanwhile, Jet’s pilot union on Tuesday wrote to aviation minister Suresh Prabhu requesting the government to ensure the airline pay salary dues of January, February and March with interest.“We have received requests for extended time off due to changes in operational requirement including leave without pay from some pilots,” says a communique from Jet to its B737 pilots titled “intent — invite requests for leave without pay.”“Due to changes in operational requirement, Boeing 737 flight crew will be assigned on a 5 day working and 3 day OFF roster from April 11 to April 26, 2019. Additionally, flight crew seeking a long break/sabbatical between April-September, 2019, may put in their requests to the fleet office for approval,” it says.Jet is yet to pay salary of January, February and March to pilots, aircraft maintenance engineers (AME) and senior management team. The pilots and AMEs had threatened to strike work from April 1. When the airline promised to clear their 87.5% salary that is due of last December, they decided to defer the strike call up to mid-April. The pilots say if Jet does not clear “substantial” part of their dues and give a clear roadmap for paying the remaining, they may strike work from April 15.On Monday, Jet’s Indian pilots’ union, National Aviators’ Guild (NAG) wrote to aviation minister Suresh Prabhu saying, “The situation (three month dues) is leading to extreme tension and frustration among our members — hardly an ideal situation in the cockpit.” NAG has demanded that Jet must pay salary dues with interest from the time the same were to be paid and when they actually are.Jet is currently operating about 13-14 aircraft. It hoped to raise this number to 75 by the month-end if unpaid lessors allow grounded planes to be flown by the airline again. The DGCA has also approved Jet’s summer schedule only till April 25, for now.Jet has close to 1,500 pilots now, with 1,100 of them members of the union NAG. In the past few weeks, several of Jet's pilots have joined rival airlines like GoAir, IndiGo, SpiceJet and Vistara and some have even joined airlines abroad. The pilots can now simply put in their papers and leave without serving any notice period since Jet defaulting on salary payment means the contract between employees and the airline has already been breached by the employer. As a result, the employees (pilots in this case) are no longer obligated to serve the notice period.Meanwhile, a frantic hunt is on for a buyer for Jet with lenders led by SBI actively engaged in talks with several corporates who are known to have an interest in aviation or are already present in the space.