Air India cancels 14 flights as stir by pilots continues

Air India today cancelled 14 flights from the national capital as a section of the agitating executive pilots refused to accept the management's proposal to set up a committee to look into their grievances and continued with their stir.

The airline cancelled 12 domestic flights to Bangalore, Varanasi, Guwahati, Dibrugarh, Leh, Nagpur, Raipur, Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh, Hyderabad and Tirupati besides two international ones to Bangkok and Kabul after the pilots of these flights did not report to work, an airlines' official said.

The national carrier operates over 50 flights from the national capital, but yesterday they decided to run just 27 flights out which only 18 were operated.

In a bid to buy peace with its agitating executive pilots, Air India last night put on hold the cut in the pilots Productivity-Linked Incentives (PLI), which triggered the stir, and decided to form a seven-member committee to look into the modalities in the cut in the PLIs.

But representative of the agitating executive pilots, Captain V K Bhalla refused to accept the proposal, saying the management will first have to pay the due flying allowance and PLIs of three month to all pilots and withdraw the order of cut in their PLIs.

"If they pay us our dues, then a neutral platform for talks would be set up and then we will go for any talks," Bhalla said.

In an attempt to resolve the standoff, Air India Chairman and Managing Director Arvind Jadhav will arrive here later today to hold talks with the agitating pilots.

Air India spokesperson Jitendra Bhargava said Jadhav will hold talks with the pilots in batches. But it would not include Capt Bhalla, who is seen as leader of the agitating pilots.  However, Bhalla said the CMD's office had intimated him on Jadhav's visit and scheduled a meeting between the two at Palam airport later in the day."If he genuinely wants to turn around the company, why don't we talk. All the issues can be resolved on the table," he added.

Other agitating pilots said they were willing to meet Jadhav if he had a "clear intention" to resolve issues raised by them. "We want to meet him (Jadhav). But he has to give an indication that he is serious about resolving our demands instead of creating confusion, and if he is ready to work for the benefit of the airline and its pilots," he said.

"We want to end this issue. But our CMD has other intentions," he alleged.  Meanwhile, Bhargava claimed that the executive pilots of Air India in Chennai had returned to work today. "Only Delhi and Kolkata pilots are on leave as of now. Hence the CMD is going to be here to hold talks with the pilots," he added.