Jet: Pawar to meet PM, union claims foreign airlines fleecing

Political heavyweight and Maharashtra strongman Sharad Pawar has assured Jet Airways employees to take up their cause with Prime Minister Narendra Modi after the elections in the state.

Kiran Pawaskar, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader and president of All India Jet Airways Officers and Staff Association met Pawar on Tuesday and raised the issues faced by the employees of the grounded airline.

Speaking to IANS, Pawaskar said that most of the foreign airlines such as British Airways and Singapore Airlines were benefiting at the cost of the Jet Airways.

"The foreign airlines have raised fares on all the routes from where Jet had pulled out. These airlines are helping their economies. We have raised all these issues in our meeting with Sharad Pawar sahab," the NCP legislator Pawaskar said.

Facing severe liquidity crisis, the Jet Airways had last week suspended its entire operations indefinitely leaving over 20,000 employees in the lurch.

Due to sudden grounding of capacity across domestic and international routes, airfares have risen. Some of the popular routes like Mumbai-London have seen airfare jumping to all time high.

--IANS

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