Kingfisher Airlines faced a fresh setback on Saturday when its pilots—who have not received salaries for five months—grounded the carrier, forcing it to cancel as many as half of its scheduled 85 to 100 flights a day.
The pilots and senior executives of the carrier were promised salaries for the month of February by Friday, by the management, but the airline did not meet its commitment forcing pilots to retaliate by reporting sick, a pilot said. "We have conveyed it to the management that if our salaries are not paid on time we will not be reporting back to work till such time as we are paid," said an agitating Kingfisher pilot asking not to be named.
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The officiating director general of civil aviation, Prashant Sukul, told ET Magazine that it has been conveyed to the airline that all salaries must be paid by Monday. "We have been told that a couple of banks did not credit money to their accounts and salary payments will happen soon. We have asked them to pay by Monday," Sukul said.
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The current state of the airline had even forced former DGCA chief Bharat Bhushan to make a file noting that could have resulted in an order unfavourable for Kingfisher. The carrier has been making losses since its inception in May 2005. The airline posted a net loss of Rs 2,328 crore in 2011-12 compared with a loss of Rs 1,027 crore a year earlier.
Kingfisher's promoter Vijay Mallya wrote a letter to all employees but this time he has not given a timeline for clearing the pending dues of the employees. Stating that it was a sad day for his airline, Mallya said, "I really hope that good sense will prevail. I am doing my best. If some of you think that cancelling flights, speaking to the media, or disgracing the 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," Mallya said in the letter.
The airline has been struggling to raise money either through an investor or from the market for over a year now. The banks have appointed HDFC Securities to value non-core assets of Kingfisher. The airline has, meanwhile, conveyed to banks that it has no objection in liquidating some of its non-core assets to service its debt. Mallya in his letter said that he has put in more than `4,000 crore into Kingfisher adding that he has personally devoted a lot of time to Kingfisher more than any other UB Group company.
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