Billionaire liquor baron Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Airline is in deep trouble now.
Apex civil aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Friday issued the debt laden, cash starved airline a show cause notice asking the airline’s management as to why its licence should not be cancelled or suspended as it had declared a lockout, grounded its entire fleet of 14 aircraft and failed to offer safe and reliable service.
The DGCA has given the carrier 15 days to reply to the notice.
In the notice DGCA chief Arun Mishra said “It had been observed that the airline was not adhering to its flight schedule and abruptly cancelled its flights time and again during the last 10 months causing great inconvenience to the travelling public.”
Mishra maintained that the violations amounted to Kingfisher not complying with the provisions of the Aircraft Rules 1937 and the regulator questioned the airline why action should not be taken against it for this violation.
Earlier, Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh made it very clear that Kingfisher Airline will have to satisfy DGCA on all safety parameters before it is allowed to resume its commercial operations once again.
The cash starved airline which was trying to resume operations from Friday has extended its lock out by a week till October 12. Talks between the employees and the management failed on Thursday as the employees did not agree to the assurance that they would be paid their full salaries once the airline is recapitalised.
Meanwhile in Mumbai, scores of Kingfisher Airlines employees, including pilots, engineers and technicians, took out a procession to the airlines office here on Friday to demand their pending salaries and other dues.
“We are making three demands only - salary, salary, salary,” the protesting employees said while participating in a protest rally.
The airline that has never made a profit since 2005, when it started its operations is saddled with debts to the tune of Rs 7,000 crore is also laden with losses to tune of Rs 8,000 crore.
Meanwhile, several of its aircraft have been either taken away by its lessors or grounded by the Airports Authority of India for non-payment of airport fees and fuel bills to oil marketing companies during the past few months.
“There are a lot of factors involved in it. That include the salaries of the employees, their disgruntlement issues and others. If the employees are disgruntled there is an issue of safety,” Singh told reporters when asked about the fate of once famed domestic carrier.
Striking engineers and pilots have rejected the airline management’s offer of one month salary dues in the next few days and remaining amount once the airline is recapitalised.
Singh said the Kingfisher employees were hopeful till this stage and these strikes were limited to only a section of employees but now engineers have gone on strike raising the problem of maintenance.
“There are lot of companies that fail. There are a number of them that revive after failing. If a company has a loss period of five years it does not mean it can t revive itself. Here we have only two responsibilities. One is that the planes must fly safely and second is that they maintain their schedules so that there is no inconvenience to the passengers,” Singh said.
Adding each aircraft must have an airworthiness certificate from engineers before it can fly. The planes must be airworthy and they (engineers) have to give a satisfactory report to the DGCA that the planes will be flying safely,” the minister said.
Sushmita Chakraborty (45) wife of Manas, a Kingfisher employee committed suicide on Thursday citing financial stress as the reason for her extreme step.
http://newindianexpress.com/business/news/article1287537.ece
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