Click to play videoNew Delhi: The Air India crisis is set to worsen with 600 more pilots threatening to join the strike on Tuesday which will be the fourth day of the stir.
Talks between Air India Chairman Arvind Jadhav and the striking pilots failed to reach an agreement on Monday when over 20 flights were cancelled after 400 executive pilots remained off work.
Air India Chairman and Managing Director Arvind Jadhav, however, ruled out shutting down the operations and appealed to the pilots to return back to work.
"We are not contemplating this type of action that will lead us to a situation where we are required to discipline anybody or a lockout. What we are really doing is that though a lot of pilots have been declaring themselves as sick or they are not reporting, based upon the resources which we have we are looking at how many flights we can operate the next day. Keeping this assessment on an hourly basis we are trying to look at 24 hours and 48 hours in advance," said Arvind Jadhav.
When asked if the management feared more pilots joining the stir, Jadhav replied, "There could be more pilots joining this and there could be a lot of problems. But our first concern is that whether the passenger is being troubled or not."
"We have opened the doors for the pilots. We are negotiating with them. We are requesting them to come across the table, discuss what is required to be done and let's work it out together. After offering them to open up on this, there is still some sort of misunderstanding where the pilots are still declaring themselves sick," he said when asked how Air India was managing as many pilots had taken sick leave.
"If fact there are 32,000 employees of Air India who are dependent of the airline. When the aircraft don't fly then some of these people don't get their allowances," he added.
When asked if the pilots don't come back and more pilots join the strike then will Air India come to a grinding halt," the airline CMD said, "I think the pilots have the interest of Air India and the passengers in their heart and in their mind. They will not allow such a situation. I am appealing through your channel to all my pilots that kindly restore normalcy, restore the credibility of the company and let's make sure that Air India is a better airline."
The pilots want the productivity-linked incentive and flying allowance to be paid. There are also reports that airline's operations might be shut down for a few days, but the management has ruled this out.
Air India has cancelled 12 flights on Tuesday, all of them from New Delhi.
The cancelled flights include Delhi-Bangkok, Delhi-Raipur-Nagpur and the Delhi-Bangalore flights. Flights to Kolkata, Kabul, Lucknow, Guwahati, the IC506 to Bangalore and Chennai will also not take off.
The AI flights from New Delhi to Ranchi, Patna and Srinagar also stand cancelled.
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