NEW DELHI: Passengers booked on Kingfisher flights for the next four days are likely to face a repeat of the chaos that their counterparts had to put up with on Saturday and Sunday. A statement on Sunday night by the airline’s spokesperson says flight disruptions will continue for four days due to unexpected events.
On Sunday, the second consecutive day that Kingfisher’s operations were affected on a large scale, about 30 of its flights from Delhi were cancelled, while its entire Kolkata operations were suspended. Kingfisher passengers had a rough time figuring out if their flights were operational or not, as the airline refused to put up any official information on its website or facilitate any media queries.
The airline statement said the media was being unfairly harsh on the airline. “It is not desirable to magnify or sensationalise any issue pertaining to Kingfisher Airlines. Flight disruptions will continue for four days due to unexpected events. We could only operate 208 daily flights,” it said.
DGCA chief Bharat Bhushan said he had not been informed of any of the sudden cancellations made by Kingfisher. The airline’s officials are set to meet him on Tuesday-Monday being a government holiday.
Employees of Kingfisher received their last salary in December and the company’s latest quarter results show a loss of over `444crores. Kingfisher’s bank accounts were attached by the tax authorities owing to non-payment of employee TDS even though it was deducted from the salaries of employees. “We have had a good meeting with our consortium of Banks who have accepted, in principle, the viability study prepared by SBI Capital markets and independent consultants. Our request for additional working capital has been acknowledged by the consortium and is subject to individual bank approvals,” Sunday’s statement said.