Statement From Kingfisher Airlines – Mumbai, March 14, 2012
- Despite the shortage of crew, Kingfisher Airlines operated 101 flights
on March 13th and will operate 101 flights on March 14th.
- Our prime mission is to maintain schedule integrity by predicting in
advance what we can with the sole objective of minimising, if not eliminating
guest inconvenience.
- We try hard 24X7 to inform guests in advance of cancelled or combined
flights and to give them the option of travelling on other airlines or to take
a full refund.
- There will, inevitably, be a small number of guests who are
inconvenienced partially because we could not access them personally but only
via their agents.
- Kingfisher apologises to all those who were affected.
- Whilst many of our pilots and engineers have expressed their
disappointment, we not only sincerely apologise to them but wish to advise that
our Chairman will meet the pilot fraternity on Thursday March 15 in Delhi.
- There is a lot of sensational speculation and assumption about us.
- We request one and all to appreciate the serious handicaps we face not
only because of our frozen accounts but because of the operating environment.
We are working hard to resolve the issues that confront us given the current
environment.
- We would like to confirm that we are curtailing our wide body overseas
operations that are bleeding heavily. To this end we have already returned one
Airbus A 330-200 to the lessor in the UK. Positive and immediate action is
being taken on all fronts to cut costs.
- We are
trying to protect the interests of our valuable employees. We share their pain
caused by unpaid salaries and we are also trying to protect their jobs apart
from paying salaries.
- Whatever
the schedule we operate, we would like to assure our valued customers that your
flights will depart as shown and on time.
- The
suspension of our ICH and BSP accounts with IATA resulted from the freeze of
our IATA accounts by the tax authorities.
- We
have, obviously suffered as guests are not able to book seamlessly through IATA
travel agents as before. This serious handicap has been partially mitigated by
encouraging our travel partners to establish booking arrangements on their
individual platforms. Nevertheless, this greatly influences our ability to
operate certain flights and it is, therefore, incorrect to assume that pilots
are solely responsible.
- We
continue to work with the tax authorities to arrive at a solution to de-freeze
our accounts as early as possible.
- We are
also working with our Bankers to realise the urgent interim working capital as
approved in the Bankers Consortium meeting held on February 17th. This is not
dependant on State Bank of India as widely reported.
- We
fully understand that State Bank of India can only consider additional
facilities once our account with them is standard and this has been debated and
minuted at the last Consortium meeting.
- The
Government's final verdict on removing the restriction on investment by a
foreign airline within the existing FDI limit of 49% is awaited. We can confirm
that there is interest from prospectives on this basis.
- Finally, we wish to assure all guests, employees and
all stakeholders that we are doing our very best.
Prakash Mirpuri
Vice President – Corporate Communications
Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.
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