On the fourth day of the Air India pilots' strike on Saturday, the national carrier saw bulk of its domestic operations getting grounded as it operated less than 20 per cent of its flights.
As strikers, owing allegiance to the Indian Commercial Pilots' Association (ICPA), remained firm on their demands, the State-owned carrier was forced to take two aircraft from private carrier Kingfisher on wet lease to enable stranded passengers reach their destinations.
Agitation to continue
The pilots said their agitation would continue and regretted the hardened stance of the management which did not open any door for talks with them.
“We are open to talks but the management has not conveyed its desire to do so either formally or informally. Till now we have not received any written or verbal communication from the management's side,'' ICPA president A. S. Bhinder told The Hindu on Saturday. The situation has worsened on account of the strike by 850 pilots as well as a majority of executive pilots reporting sick.
In trouble
Capt. Bhinder and ICPA general secretary Rishabh Kapur are among the seven pilots sacked by the management, which has also derecognised their association and sealed their offices in Delhi and Mumbai.
The pilots also face contempt of court action, initiated by the Delhi High Court.
The airline tried to put in place some alternative strategies to minimise hardships caused to hundreds of stranded passengers by taking two aircraft from Kingfisher Airlines on wet lease and flew a large number of them to Patna, Varanasi and Mumbai. Pilots are also made available in a wet lease arrangement.
At least 135 of 165 domestic flights were withdrawn by Air India during the day as the number of pilots were not enough to run services, airline officials said.
Most passengers, including those who booked on the Air India earlier, cancelled their tickets and queues were missing outside their counters at the airports, whereas those of the private carriers were crowded.
Threat of lockout
Amid threat of a lockout and mass sacking, Mr. Kapur said they would continue the agitation till they were called for negotiations on their demands. He said the ICPA was ready for talks “but the management wants to lock the airline down and doesn't want to talk.”
‘Efforts failed'
Capt. Kapur said in Mumbai that they were unable to get in touch with the management or the government for the dialogue so far. “We cannot but continue our agitation. Even our backdoor efforts to get talks going have failed so far,” he said.
The pilots sought an assurance from the government that their demands would be considered in a time-bound manner.
They are demanding a higher fixed component in the salary package, a CBI probe into alleged mismanagement which has led to losses of over Rs.16,000 crore to Air India and removal of airline CMD Arvind Jadhav holding him responsible for the “financial mess.”
Air India operates 320 scheduled flights daily through its entire network, including those operated by its subsidiaries — the Alliance Air, the Air India Express and the Air India (International).
