By IANS,
Mumbai/New Delhi : Some 20,000 air passengers in India, including hundreds of foreign visitors, were severely inconvenienced as nearly 400 pilots of Jet Airways went on “sick leave” Tuesday, causing cancellation of nearly 200 flights and chaos at airports.
Flights out of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Chennai were in a shambles as a result of the pilots’ mass “sick leave”. Jet Airways operates 380 flights to 63 destinations in India and overseas, of which 113 domestic and 16 international flights were cancelled.
The mass sick leave was to push for reinstatement of two pilots sacked earlier by the airline.
In a reprieve to the airlines, the Bombay High Court passed an order barring any form of strike by the pilots.
Jet Airways had petitioned the court Tuesday to restrain the National Aviators’ Guild (NAG) – a union of 400 Jet Airways pilots – from resorting to any form of strike. Jet Airways has 1,080 pilots on its rolls.
In the evening, Jet Airways sacked three more pilots even as talks between the management and the agitating employees are yet to take place.
The government has asked the airline to sort out the issue so that passengers were not put to inconvenience.
However, the worst hit in the standoff between the agitating pilots and airlines management were the passengers.
“The least the airlines could have done is inform me that my flight was being cancelled,” complained V.S. Sharma who was to fly to Mumbai from Delhi. “I could have made alternative arrangements. Really, this is very, very bizarre.”
Stranded passengers claim that rival carriers doubled their fares arbitrarily to cash in on the sudden rush for tickets.
“I had to pay Rs.6,000 extra. This is double the amount I usually pay for my Delhi-Mumbai tickets,” said Annu Kumar, an IT professional who bought a Kingfisher ticket after his Jet Airways flight to Mumbai was cancelled.
“They have clearly taken advantage of this situation,” Kumar told IANS in Delhi.
The passengers were particularly agitated after learning that the cause for the pilots’ “sick leave” was their demand for reinstatement of two pilots sacked by the airline.
National carrier Air India offered help saying it had both aircraft and crew on stand-by for immediate deployment should Jet Airways be forced to cancel more flights.
“We are in talks with the government and Jet Airways officials,” Air India spokesperson Jitendra Bhargava said.
Home Secretary G.K. Pillai asked all state chief secretaries to review the situation in their States with regard to the “wildcat strike” and invoke provisions of their respective Essential Services Maintenance Act (ESMA).
The civil aviation ministry asked the Jet Airways management and its pilots to sort out issues through dialogue rather than inconvenience thousands of passengers.
“Our view is very clear. We have said we’d like this to be solved. Both sides should come to the table,” Civil Aviation Secretary M. Madhavan Nambiar told a news conference here.
Jet Airways said all affected guests can get a full refund or rebook themselves on an alternate date without any cancellation or reissue charges.
The newly formed NAG has been asking the carrier to take back two pilots sacked last month.
NAG president Girish Kaushik said the guild had issued the mandatory 14-day notice to the airline, and added the sacking of the two pilots was an act of vendetta for starting a new union and was totally unjustified.
The two sacked senior pilots, Balaraman and Sam Thomas, were told of their termination by e-mail.
“My sincere apologies to passengers. All we want is that the management takes the two pilots back,” Kaushik told IANS. “We are not on strike. This is an individual decision by each pilot.”
Asked if it was not too much of a coincidence that some 400 pilots reported sick at the same time, Kaushik said: “We could all have had food poisoning. That’s why we all could have become ill.”
Jet Airways said it was in conciliatory talks with the union and the Regional Labour Commissioner had warned that any strike during this period would be deemed illegal as per the Industrial Disputes Act.
Airline chairman Naresh Goyal also met Civil Aviation Secretary Nambiar and Director General Civil Aviation S.N.A. Zaidi to brief them on the issue and seek their help in ensuring that the pilots report back at work.