Mumbai: Worried over the
possibility of its employees dragging the airline management to the Labour
Court over non-payment of salaries, Kingfisher Airline Chairman Vijya Mallya
has "assured" the staff of paying their January salaries from
Wednesday onwards, airline sources said on Monday.
"Mallya
said in his May 5 communication to the employees that the airline will start
remitting January salaries from May 9 onwards," sources told PTI quoting
from the email message.
In
his email message Mallya also said that a "significant" portion of
the February salaries would be paid by the month-end, they said.
Mallya's
communication to employees comes following its pilots serving a deadline of May
8 to the management for paying January salaries or face strike.
Besides,
they had demanded that the management should also clear the remaining salary in
a phased manner by June 30.
A
section of the staff including pilots and engineers had last week said that
they were contemplating moving to the Labour Court to seek its intervention and
expedite settlement of their dues.
Meanwhile,
Mallya has also expressed hope that the airline would return to the global
distribution network of IATA shortly, sources said.
Beleaguered
Kingfisher Airlines was suspended for non-payment of dues by the IATA in March
from participating in a system which enables airlines to settle their interline
billings globally.
Airlines
and airline-associated companies join the IATA Clearing House to settle
accounts for services provided by them to other airlines or firms.
Kingfisher
Airlines has been facing financial troubles for almost a year now. The airline,
which never made a profit since its inception in May 2005, reported a net loss
of Rs 444.26 crore in the December quarter. It suffered a loss of Rs 1,027
crore in 2010-11 and has a debt of Rs 7,057.08 crore.
Due
to the paucity of funds, it now operates only 110 flights a day with a fleet of
20 aircraft against 400 flights per day last year with 66 planes.
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