New Delhi/Mumbai, Jul 14: Over 40 Kingfisher flights were cancelled today due to a strike by its pilots to protest non-payment of salaries, as airline promoter Vijay Mallya warned them not to “disgrace” the company by talking to the media.
The cash-strapped airline's schedule was disrupted as 12 flights out of Delhi, 18 Bangalore, six from Mumbai and several others from all across its network were cancelled, causing immense hardship to passengers.
The passengers booked on these flights were re-booked on other flights or given refunds, a spokesperson said.
Mallya wrote an open letter to all Kingfisher employees saying, “If some of you think that cancelling flights, speaking to media, or disgracing our Company will produce cash and salaries, you are wrong. This only makes my recapitalisation efforts more difficult by causing concern and apprehension among our potential investors.”
He said the media would “disgrace us and our flights going forward will be empty leading to further loss of income as our guests will not select Kingfisher if they are doubtful about the integrity of our schedule.”
Maintaining that “damaging the future of Kingfisher in the public eyes is not going to produce cash”, he said, “it only makes it more difficult to recover.”
While the spokesperson said that 75 per cent of the staff had been paid salaries and the rest would be paid by Monday, there was no mention of this in Mallya's letter.
But staffers, who wished not to be named, asked the management to take the blame for “repeatedly missing deadlines” for paying salary backlog. “We have kept working for so long despite being paid,” the agitators said.
Maintaining that the payments received by some of them was the salary of the month of February and several others were yet to be paid, they said the entire staff was still awaiting the salary backlog of March, April, May and June.
Responding to Mallya's letter, the agitating staff said there could not be a bigger disgrace to the company than defaulting on payments to global aircraft leasing companies, airport operators, oil marketing firms, government's taxes, apart from the salaries of its employees.
During recent talks, Kingfisher management had promised the pilots, who did not report to work on July 11 and 12 too, that their salaries would be paid by Friday but failed to keep its promise, the employees said.
The flights cancelled from Delhi included those to Mumbai, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Kullu, Jaipur and Shimla, while those from Bangalore included services to Chennai, Mangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Hubli, Goa and Pune.
An airlines spokesperson said, “A certain section of employees have decided to stay away from duties due to salary payments not being credited to the bank accounts of all employees by Friday. Kingfisher wishes to state that more than 75 per cent of employees have actually received their promised salaries on Friday”.
“We have further promised that the balance of our employees will receive their salaries by Monday”, the spokesman said.
This is the third time in the last twelve days that the pilots have struck work.
The strike on July 2 was called off after a few hours with the management promising to pay some sections of staff from July 6.
