The Indian Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has given Kingfisher Airlines until tomorrow to revise its flight schedule. The airline has cancelled flights since the weekend without informing the authority and has not yet back to operating its full schedule. The airline is operating about 175 flights daily with only 28 aircraft airborne out of its 64-strong fleet.
The company has told the DGCA that employee salaries for the month of December 2011 would be paid by the end of February and January 2012 salaries by 20 March 2012.
Kingfisher has closed down its Kolkata operations because staff there had not been paid salaries for months. The DGCA has asked the government to review the acceptability of this step.
Kingfisher Airlines' CEO Sanjay Agarwal and other top officials appeared before the aviation regulator, the Director General of Civil Aviation or DGCA today to explain the large-scale disruption of operations and the reasons behind them. While Kingfisher chief Vijay Mallya has apologised to fliers affected by its sudden flight cancellations and admitted that Income Tax authorities had frozen the airlines bank accounts.
"We are in dialogue with the tax authorities. We have pointed out to them that this drastic action causes huge public inconvenience. Apart from the fact that if our flights get disrupted on a continued basis, then our revenue gets affected," Mallya said.