[1]Cash-strapped Kingfisher Airlines has stopped its services from more than 30 cities, including Hyderabad and Kolkata, and has given compulsory leave to nearly half of its 7,000 odd employees till the company gets fresh funds. Prior to the crisis, liquor baron Vijay Mallya promoted airline used to fly to 60 destinations.
In its summer schedule, the airline said it would operate only 120 daily flights with 20 dedicated aircraft — a steep fall from the 400 daily flights with 64 aircraft that the cash-strapped company had proposed earlier. In a statement, the airline said on Tuesday that it had “temporarily suspended” operations from several stations (including Hyderabad and Kolkata) as per a “holding plan”.
Recently, the airline’s owner Mr Vijay Mallya had met the Directorate General of Civil Aviation authorities expressing the company’s inability to operate from Hyderabad and other centres. Most of the airline’s staff at such stations “have been asked to stay at home while remaining are on the company’s rolls”, the statement said.
Some of the other destinations where operations have been suspended are Patna, Lucknow, Thiruva-nanthapuram, Amritsar and Bhubaneshwar. The employees, who have been asked to proceed on leave without pay, could be constitute about 40-50 per cent of its 7,000-strong workforce. The airline will decide on job cuts after banks take a decision on working capital. Ms Sagarika (name changed), working as a Kingfisher ground staff in Hyderabad said, “We have been asked to proceed on ‘leave without pay’. In any case, we were not getting our salaries regularly.”
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