The strike by a section of pilots of national carrier Air India has affected the services by the airline to the Cochin airport on Tuesday. So far, only one international service and a domestic service have been cancelled during the day , said the airport officials.
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In the international sector, the departure of Air India AI 911 to Dammam at 8.05 am was cancelled and in the domestic sector, the departure of Indian flight IC 466 flying in the Thiruvanathapauram-Kochi- Delhi route has also been cancelled owing to the strike.
The airline officials informed that while most of the passengers to Dammam would be accommodated to the flights by Gulf Air and Oman Air flights to the same destination as per seat availability on the next day, others would be re-funded of their ticket fare. All the passengers in the IC flight to the national capital were also accommodated in flights by various other private airlines including Jet Airways, Jetlite and Indigo.
They also claimed that the majority of the airline’s operations to the gulf sector would be unaffected despite the strike since the pilots of Air India Express, the no-frills arm of the airline were not party to the ongoing
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strike.
Our Staff Reporter fro Malappuram reports:
The ongoing pilot strike has severely crippled the services of Air India from Calicut International Airport, Karipur. The airline cancelled three services on Monday owing to unavailability of pilots.
Flight IC 657 from Delhi via Mumbai scheduled to arrive at Karipur at 12.55 p.m. was cancelled. The other cancelled services were Flight IC 993 from Chennai to Kuwait via Karipur and Mumbai, scheduled at
Karipur at 3.10 p.m.; and Flight AI 998 to Doha-Bahrain scheduled to leave Karipur at 3 p.m.
The passengers of an Air India flight to Sharjah, which was cancelled on Monday, were sent to Dubai on Tuesday by two flights.
Calicut International Airport at Karipur had witnessed uproarious scenes on Monday night following the cancellation of a couple of flights. Passengers turned violent and smashed the Air India counters after they were made to wait for hours on end.
The passengers bound for Muscat and Sharjah were trapped at the airport as the national carrier could not operate its flights on time.
The Muscat-bound passengers scheduled to leave on Sunday were assured of a flight on Monday via Sharjah. But when the airline cancelled its Sharjah flight on Monday evening, they vent their ire at the airline
staff at the counters, leading to the intervention of the Central Industrial Security Force personnel.
The situation is likely to turn worse as the pilot strike continued on Tuesday and the airline hinted at grounding its services.