Stir against continued non-payment of salaries airline says problem temporary, operations should normalize soon.
Kingfisher Airlines on Monday grounded or merged nearly a fifth of its truncated schedule of 180 flights, because many pilots did not report for duty as protest over non-payment of salaries. Their salaries haven’t been paid for four months and travel bills for two months. An airline release said it operated 145 flights on Monday. Around 300 of the 510 pilots in the airline did not report for duty and would continue to stay away from work. However, the cancellations did not lead to soaring air fares, as most travel agents have already stopped selling Kingfisher tickets.Air fares had risen 15-20 per cent last week, after Kingfisher was suspended from three payment systems of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), including its billing and settlement plan. The latter is a system designed to facilitate and simplify the selling, reporting and remitting procedures of IATA-accredited passenger sales agents, as well as to improve financial control and cash flow for member-airlines.
“When Jet Airways faced such a problem, Naresh Goyal (the chairman) met the pilots at his home to resolve the issue. Here, no one is bothered to meet us and have not even tried to contact us. They have not paid our salaries and travel bills, and we are in great financial stress,” said a senior commander in the airline, who also did not report to duty. He said things would worsen as the strike advanced. The directorate general of civil aviation said it was monitoring the situation to ensure safety was not compromised. Kingfisher, in an official response, said flights were being merged because of lower loads and cancelled because of the employee agitation. “The flight loads have reduced because of our limited distribution ability, caused by the IATA suspension. We are, therefore, combining some of our flights. Also, some of the flights are being cancelled as a result of employee agitation on account of delayed salaries. This situation has arisen as a consequence of our bank accounts having been frozen by the tax authorities,” said a release from the airline. It said it also expected to shortly return to the full schedule of 180 flights. “Those guests whose flights are affected are being notified. They are either being accommodated on other airlines or offered a full refund,” the release added. The income tax and service tax departments have frozen Kingfisher accounts because of the delay in clearing their dues with the former. The airline owes a total of Rs 430 crore to both.
Source: Business Standard
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