Passengers suffer: 16 Kingfisher flights cancelled from Mumbai, Bangalore

Mtoday news / NDTV

Mumbai, Feb 19:  Passengers booked on Kingfisher Airlines are in for some trouble as the country’s third largest airline has announced that its operations will be curtailed over the next four days. On Sunday, Kingfisher Airlines cancelled 16 flights from Mumbai. Several other Kingfisher flights from Mumbai have also been delayed.

The airline has stopped its operations in Kolkata.

All these cancellations come amidst reports that the airline is going through financial trouble and one of its bank accounts has been seized by the income tax authorities. The Kingfisher management says that this is a planned move and they don’t intend to shut down any of its existing operations.

However, last night there was a high level meeting where major restructuring plan of the airline was discussed. One of the options discussed in the meeting was cutting down staff or scrapping operations on non-profitable routes like Patna, Hyderabad, Lucknow, say sources.

Kingfisher’s services to Singapore were also affected as its website showed there were no flights available for the next ten days.

At least five flights from Delhi, including three to Pune, and another six flights from Mumbai were cancelled on Saturday.

Maintaining that most of the stranded passengers at various airports were accommodated in other airlines, airport sources on Saturday said over 30 Kingfisher aircraft were grounded. The airline was operating only about 160-180 flights out of its already curtailed winter schedule of 240.

The sources said operations from Tier-II and Tier-III cities are likely to be affected until March-end.

The staffers, particularly those on contract, wanted the airline to clear salary dues and later walked out en masse, leaving passengers in the lurch.

Kingfisher owes an estimated Rs. 1,500 crore to SBI, about Rs. 400 crore each to Corporation Bank and Bank of Baroda and Rs. 380 crore to Federal Bank, among other lenders.

SBI had last month said it would be difficult for lenders to provide more funds, unless Kingfisher pays Rs. 100 crore to restore a bank guarantee invoked after the carrier failed to repay its loans or makes good the default.

On Friday, auditors of Kingfisher Airlines had raised concern over its ability to stay afloat and said it would need to inject more money to remain a "going concern".

’Going concern’ means that the firm in question would not go broke or be liquidated and remain operationally afloat in the foreseeable future.

 

Kingfisher cancels 13 flights from Bangalore

Passengers of Kingfisher Airlines from here were put to hardship as the cash-strapped airlines today cancelled at least 13 flights from Bangalore International Airport (BIA) for about four days.

"At least 13 flights departing from BIA to various cities have been cancelled," airport sources said.

Flights to Mumbai, Chennai, Goa, Mangalore, Hubli, Vijayawada and Coimbatore had been cancelled, they said.

Kingfisher Airlines had yesterday said it was a planned move to curtail operations over the next four 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,” a Kingfisher Airlines spokesperson said.

Airport sources also said the stranded passengers at BIA were accommodated in other airlines flights and some others were informed about cancellations beforehand.

Most of the agitated passengers who gathered at the Kingfisher Airlines’ counter at the airport complained that they were not informed earlier about the cancellations expressed unhappiness over the wait for long hours at the airport