50 pilots refuse to fly airline claims flights on schedule

About 50 Kingfisher Airlines pilots have refused to operate flights until their salaries were paid. On Thursday, airline pilots met Chief Executive Officer Sanjay Aggarwal to discuss the delay in the payment of their salaries. However they couldn’t decide on a date by when the salaries would be paid.

As a protest, around 50 pilots have refused to operate, said an airline source. A Kingfisher Airlines spokesperson said, “Flights are operating according to schedule today.” However, according to sources in Mumbai, departures to Ahmedabad, Coimbatore and Singapore were either cancelled or clubbed.

The airline spokesperson did not respond to the query on the protest by pilots.

 

Last week, the airline had said it had sufficient pilots to operate its flights. The total number of commanders and co-pilots in the airline is around 400. The airline has cut down its schedule and is operating 170 flights, instead of 240 a month earlier. It is also operating only 28 of its 64 planes.

Over a hundred pilots quit the airline last year, with about sixty of them quitting in the last two months to join rival IndiGo.

“Salaries have not been paid for two months. Now, it is being said we may get it late next week. More pilots are likely to protest and refuse to operate flights,” said an airline commander.

In a letter to employees on Sunday, Chairman Vijay Mallya assured salaries and income tax dues would be cleared early next week. “I have organised funding so that we can pay your seriously overdue salaries, which is a source of great personal sorrow for me,” he wrote.