Kingfisher grounds some flights
Passengers booked on India’s Kingfisher Airlines may be in for trouble as the financially strapped airline cancelled several flights from key Indian cities and completely shut down operations from Kolkata, including international flights, for about 10 days.
Sources claim that the beleaguered airline has now grounded almost half of its fleet owing to financial distress and indebtedness of an estimated Rs2,280 crore (Dh1.7 billion) to just three of its biggest lenders – the State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda and Federal Bank.
Travel agents and airport sources said the airline seemed to have suspended its operations from Kolkata, which has seven daily flights, including one each to Dhaka and Bangkok. Evidently, Kingfisher’s services to Singapore are also affected as its website showed there were no flights available for the next 10 days.
Travel agents and airport sources said at least five flights from Delhi, including three to Pune, and another six flights from Mumbai were cancelled today.
Its Dubai flights, both from New Delhi and Mumbai seem to be operating on schedule even as a travel agency official told Indian news channel NDTV said though the Kingfisher website was technically showing flight availability on its global distribution system, it seems flight tickets were not actually available for sale. This situation was prevalent on the booking system till March end, he added.
On Sunday, NDTV reported that Kingfisher Airlines has cancelled 16 flights from Mumbai. Several other Kingfisher flights from Mumbai have also been delayed.
These cancellations are in addition to those flights that were cancelled earlier after the airline had said it had grounded 20 of the 64 aircraft for reconfiguration and want of repairs late last year.
Late on Saturday night, a spokesperson of Kingfisher Airlines admitted that there had been flight disruptions and said these will continue for the next few days.
“Admittedly there have been flight disruptions since yesterday which will continue for four days due to unexpected events including bird strikes which rendered aircraft out of service,” the spokesperson said.
“We would like to categorically state that we have not shut any stations nor do we have any intention of doing so,” he added.
The spokesperson also admitted that Indian income tax authorities had attached the airlines’ bank accounts, but claimed that such a step was also taken in the case of Air India.
“We confirm that our bank accounts were attached by the tax authorities. However, this has happened in the past not just to us but also to Air India. We have resolved issues before and will do so again,” he said.
The spokesperson added that the airlines will operate the full schedule on its booking system within the next four days.