Kingfisher Management agrees to give four month salary, employees returns to work man
New Delhi: Striking employees of Kingfisher Airlines resumes to work on Thursday after the management agreeing to pay four months salary dues by December end.
Resumption of Kingfisher’s flight operations may take at least three to four weeks as the airline has to get its suspended flying license revoked by the DGCA which also has to satisfy itself on safety issues as well as the viability of their financial and operational plans.
Under the agreement arrived at, the management, which was earlier offering only three months salaries, climbed down to accept the workers’ demand for payment of four out of seven months’ dues by December end.
The management also withdrew its circular asking the staffers to give a written undertaking before resuming duty.
All Kingfisher flights have remained suspended since September 30 due to the strike, followed by a lockout from October one and then suspension of their Scheduled Operator’s Permit (SOP) or the flying license by aviation regulator DGCA. The license of Kingfisher was issued on August 26, 2003, and is valid till December 31 this year.
The beleaguered carrier, which early last year had a fleet of 66 aircraft, now has ten — seven Airbus A-320s and three ATR turbo-props. The airline is saddled with a loss of Rs 8,000 crore and a debt burden of another over Rs 7,524 crore, a large part of which has not been serviced for several months.
The airline would have to get all necessary clearances from the DGCA by submitting the airline’s financial and operational plans to the satisfaction of the regulator, which would then take a decision on revoking suspension of the SOP and allowing the ailine to resume operations.
Kingfisher management top brass met the striking engineers and pilots separately here in a bid to try to break the deadlock in a bid to prevent any protests by striking staffers during the upcoming Formula One Grand Prix, in which airline promoter Vijay Mallya is involved.
Mallya, who co-owns the Sahara Force India team that is participating in the Indian Grand Prix, wanted to avoid any disruption by the agitating employees during the motor race.
Earlier, Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh said while salary was “a big issue and the employees should be paid, the bigger issue than that is the airline’s fiscal assurance to the DGCA… They have lot of outstandings to the Airports Authority (of India), to companies, to lessors, so its not just a question of salaries to the employees.”
