Air India’s six domestic flights and two international flight to Sharjah and Dubai from the three airports of the state on Friday had to be cancelled on account of the nation-wide strike by a section of pilots of Air India owing allegiance to the Indian Commercial Pilots Association that entered the third day today.
The AI 466 flight from Thiruvananthapuram to Delhi via Kochi that has high patronage, AI 507 flight to Chennai and Bangalore, AI 368 flight to Mumbai and the AI 967 flight to Sharjah were cancelled in view of the strike by the pilots, airline sources said.
The AI 682 flight from Kochi to Mumbai, the AI 511 flight to Bangalore and the AI 937 flight from Kozhikode to Dubai and the AI 658 flight to Delhi were the other cancelled flights on Friday. The pilots of the erstwhile Indian Airlines are on indefinite strike demanding pay parity to that of the Air India pilots.
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To mitigate the problems of the passengers, the national carrier had decided to operate a flight from here to Chennai and Bangalore at 3.30 p.m. by combining AI 507 and 511. The flight from Bangalore to Thiruvananthapuram has been extended to Male. The flight will leave from here at 5.45 to the island nation.
Airline sources said the national carrier will operate the scheduled flight from Kochi to Delhi in the evening. The low cost carrier of the national carrier, Air India Express operated two special flights from Kochi and Kozhikode to the Gulf sector to clear the passengers who had been held up over the cancellation of Air India flights. The flights were in the Kochi-Kozhikode-Sharajah sector and back and in the Kozhikode-Dubai-Kozhikode sectors.
An airline spokesman Air India Express has plans to operate a special flight from Thiruvananthapuram to Sharjah on Saturday. The special flights from Kochi and Kozhikode on Friday were full and that the strike had not affected the operations of Air India Express and Air India in any way. Air India had already stopped the advanced booking in the domestic sector in view of the strike.
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Meanwhile, Maldivian Air operated an additional flight from Thiruvananthapuram to Male on Thursday night in addition to the regular two flights in the sector. A spokesman of the airline said they had sought permission for operating five additional flights using the 56 seater Dash-8 aircraft from Thiruvananthapuram to Male and back for the benefit of the passengers.
Anil Radhakrishnan. S
, 'The Hindu'.