Trouble mounts for Vijay Mallya's Kingfisher Airlines

Crisis deepened for Vijay Mallya's Kingfisher Airlines on Wednesday as reconcialatory talks between the management and striking engineers and pilots over payment of seven-month backlog of salaries failed.



Airline CEO Sanjay Agarwal and UB Group's Chief Financial Officer Ravi Nedungadi attended the meetings with the commercial staff as well as engineers and pilots in Mumbai.

They are expected to meet the employees in Delhi on Thursday.

With no end to the deadlock, a question mark hung over the airline's plans to resume operations from Friday, after a four-day partial lockout and complete suspension of all operations since Monday night.

The protestors rejected the offer of part payment and vowed to continue their agitation.

"Our strike will continue as management has failed to give any commitment on payment of salary," Capt Vikrant Patkar, a representative of striking Kingfisher engineers and pilots said.

On its part, the management offered to pay one month's salary soon and "expedite the payment of the remaining six months as soon as the company gets recapitalised," an airline official said on condition of anonymity.

But this offer was rejected by the employees.

"There is no money and they can't give any commitment also. The engineers and pilots will continue with their agitation," Patkar said.

He said the management offered "us one month salary and that too 10-15 days later. We are not going to work unless we are paid for 7 months. So we have rejected their offer."

Top Kingfisher officials had promised the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) that they would hold meetings with various sections of the staff in an attempt to end the strike and the process began on Wednesday.

Earlier in the day, Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh said DGCA would submit an interim report on the situation facing Kingfisher, including the safety issue as aircraft engineers were on strike.

Mallya's cash-strapped Kingfisher Airlines has been saddled with a huge loss of Rs 8,000 crore and a debt burden of another over Rs 7,000 crore, a large part of which has not serviced since January.

Several of its aircraft have been either taken away by its lessors or grounded by the Airports Authority of India for non-payment of dues during the past few months.

With inputs from PTI