All Kingfisher flights cancelled in Bangalore

BANGALORE: It was the continuation of Sunday’s horror for the passengers booked on Kingfisher Airlines (KFA) on Monday. The 12 flights that KFA operates from and to Bangalore (six arrivals and six departures) connecting cities that include Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Goa, were all cancelled.
Senior officials at Bengaluru International Airport (BIA) confirmed the cancellations.KFA is facing yet another staff crisis, as the airline’s management is yet to pay salaries to its employees for the past seven months. Sources said striking employees have asked for just two months salary — March and April. The CEO of the airline, Sanjay Aggarwal, who was holidaying at a resort in Coorg, cut short his vacation and returned to handle the crisis on Monday.
Passengers booked on KFA flights to and from Bangalore said that initially KFA flights showed a ‘delayed’ status, but after hours of waiting at the airport, the flights were cancelled. They also allege that the airline did not alert them either by SMS or email and they had to arrive at the airport to know that the flights were cancelled.
Dhruv Baldawa, a resident of Mumbai, who was one among a host of passengers left stranded at BIA, tweeted, “Flight from Bangalore cancelled, stuck at the airport for more than four hours.” When TOI contacted him he said he was given a full refund and had to book tickets on another carrier.
Earlier in the day KFA issued the following statement: “A section of employees of KFA have not been reporting to work over the last fortnight and over the past two days they have been threatening and even manhandling the other employees who are reporting to work as usual. We are anticipating disruptions/delays of flights across our network. With a view to mitigating the impact of these anticipated disruptions, we are proactively canceling several flights across our network.”
Since the KFA crisis is just a day old, there has been no visible impact on ticket prices from Bangalore. “Even on the Delhi-Bangalore or Mumbai-Bangalore sectors where KFA has some market share left there has been no visible increase in fares,” said Sanjay Bhasin, MD, goibibo.com, an online travel portal.
Bhasin added, “Do remember that on an overall basis KFA only has a 3% market share, as per DGCA data. With other airlines flying at less than 70 % load factors, there is enough inventory still available in case of cancellation and hence there isn’t an appreciable increase in fare trends.”
However, Bhasin believes that if the strike continues, other airlines might, “on an opportunistic basis, increase fares by 10%. But this will be only for the immediate travel.”