By IANS,
Mumbai/New Delhi : Some 20,000 air passengers in India, including hundreds of foreigners, were severely inconvenienced after nearly 400 pilots of Jet Airways went on “sick leave” Tuesday, causing cancellation of 129 flights and chaos at airports.
Flights out of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Chennai bore the brunt of this mass leave. The airline operates 380 flights to 63 destinations in India and overseas, of which 113 domestic and 16 international flights were cancelled.
“The least the airline people could have done is informed 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.”
The passengers were particularly agitated after learning that the cause for this “sick leave” was the demand for reinstatement of two pilots who were sacked by the airline.
Jet Airways has 1,080 pilots on its rolls.
“Any act on the part of pilots, which may result in last-minute cancellation of flights and harassment of passengers, would be treated as an act against the public interest,” the civil aviation ministry said in a statement.
Home Secretary G.K. Pillai also wrote to the chief secretaries of all states to review the situation in their States with regard to the “wildcat strike” by Jet Airways pilots and invoke provisions of their respective Essential Services Maintenance Act.
Jet Airways said all affected guests can get a full refund or rebook themselves on an alternate date without any cancellation or reissue charges, but passengers were not amused.
“Regrettably, a section of the pilots who were rostered for operations have resorted to a simulated strike by reporting sick,” a Jet Airways spokesperson said in a statement.
“Jet Airways is taking all steps to minimise the inconvenience to its guests. The airline will make all efforts to operate the maximum number of flights,” the statement said.
“However, perforce, some flights may have to be combined or cancelled. We will try to accommodate our guests on alternate flights.”
The newly formed National Aviators Guild, a union of some Jet Airways pilots, has been asking the carrier to take back two pilots sacked last month.
Girish Kaushik, the president of the guild, 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 being instrumental in 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. That is our only demand,” 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 has had been 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 M. Madhavan 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.