Three of the 300-odd agitating Air India pilots reported back to work this evening, said a spokesperson of the airline, who said the management was expecting “many more pilots to return to work later tonight”.
The Indian Pilots Guild, which has been spearheading the strike for nine days, denied the news. “These are all rumours,” its president Jitendra Awhad said.
That apart, Air India (AI) kicked off a contingency plan by cutting its international flights by almost a half.
The government carrier, which operates a schedule of 800 flights a week, announced that it would be flying only 410 a week.
The pilots’ agitation has led to a loss of about Rs 170 crore in nine days. This is higher than the loss of Rs 160 crore in a 10-day agitation by 800 pilots of the Indian Commercial Pilots Association, the union for pilots from erstwhile Indian Airlines, that had impacted domestic operations.
The government had already expressed its displeasure about the agitation. Only yesterday, Union minister for civil aviation Ajit Singh had said the airline lost Rs 150 crore in the eight days of the strike. The losses are on account of revenue losses and money utilised in providing accommodation to stranded passengers, he told Parliament.
Air India’s daily revenue is Rs 37 crore, of which international operations account for Rs 22 crore. That has been impacted the most.
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An Air India official said the losses would be “much more” than the basic numbers. “At this point in time, we have only done a basic calculation of how much revenue has been impacted and how much we have to spend extra,” he said. “With this strike, we have lost the credibility of the passengers. That would show in our revenue for the coming months; it would run into several crores.”
Even after nine days, the pilots and the management have not initiated talks to reach a consensus on the issue. On their part, the pilots have relented a bit and called the civil aviation ministry and the airline management for unconditional talks, but the minister had categorically stated that any dialogue can happen only after pilots returned to work.
On the legal front, the pilots from the IPG moved the Delhi High Court, which reserved its order till Thursday, against a single-judge order restraining them from continuing their agitation by reporting sick and staging demonstrations.
PTI reported that a two-judge bench headed by Sanjay Kishan Kaul is likely to pronounce its order tomorrow on a plea by the IPG.
On May 9, judge Reva Khetrapal had restrained over 300 agitating Air India pilots from continuing their “illegal strike” after reporting sick and then staging demonstrations, a day after the airlines’ management sacked 10 pilots and derecognised their union.