Zeenews Bureau
New Delhi: Air travelers are bracing for a tough weekend ahead with Air India pilots’ strike entering its fourth day on Saturday.
With pilots adamant the airline has further curtailed its operations and will operate just 39 domestic flights out of its regular 320 today.
"We have curtailed more than 52 percent of our domestic flights and operating on only trunk routes, that is too metro cities," an AI spokesperson said.
"Under the contingency plan, we have reduced the number of flights as we do not have any pilots," he said.
While 21 flights will be operated from the national capital, Air India's Mumbai operations have almost come to a standstill as the airline may operate just five flights between 9.00 and 11.30 am, an AI spokeswoman said in Mumbai. The national carrier did not undertake any operations from Mumbai before 9.00 am.
Sources said the AI will be operating the Delhi-Patna-Varanasi flight AI 409 and Delhi-Mumbai-Delhi AI 805 on an aircraft which has been taken on wet lease to operate the two flights. Under a wet lease, an aircraft comes along with crew members.
Around 12 of Air India’s international flights from Delhi have also been cancelled, reports said.
The airline has also fired more pilots, taking the total number of pilots to nine whose services have been terminated.
Despite the Delhi High Court ordering the striking pilots to get back to work and the airline management threatening stern action and declaring a lock-out, the 850-plus agitating pilots have refused to call off their protest action and even said yesterday that they were ready to go the jail.
The Delhi HC yesterday initiated contempt of court proceedings against the pilots for their "utter
defiance" of its order calling it as "brazen and smacking of sheer arrogance".
"We are more than willing to go jail. Nearly 31,000 Air India employees will also be ready to court arrest because we are serious about saving the national carrier from ruin," Rishab Kapur, general secretary of the banned Indian Commercial Pilot Associations (ICPA), said.
The pilots have demanded a CBI probe into "corruption" in the airline under the leadership of Managing Director Arvind Jadhav.
The Air India management has made it clear that it would not hold any talks until the pilots get back to work.
The management is also mulling invoking the Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA) in the next few days.
The airline has already stopped making bookings for domestic flights till May 3. It is also operating bigger planes on main routes like Delhi and Mumbai.
Further, reports said Air India may take help of Kingfisher pilots to fly its planes.
According to reports, the national air carrier has so far lost Rs 26 crore due to the strike. The recurring strikes over pay disputes has even forced many to think whether privatization is the only option left to revive the Maharaja.
First Published: Saturday, April 30, 2011, 10:35