“The management may say that flights will resume from October 13, but we will not return to work till our seven months’ salaries are paid. Let us now pray to the almighty,” a Kingfisher employee said to a few hundred colleagues, who had gathered at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar for a protest here on Tuesday evening.

Almost all the airline employees seem to have one grouse – that the management was refusing to talk to them about when salaries would be paid.

Staffers claim that while the Indian staff was unpaid for several months, those manning offices in London and Hong Kong were being paid as the law there is more stringent.

Another staffer wondered why the airline licence had not been sold, a move they said would generate funds of hundreds of crores of rupees, enough to meet salaries and other costs, especially as neither the management nor the promoter seem to know how to move forward.

The employees refuted charges of manhandling or resorting to violence.

Kingfisher Airlines had declared a lock-out on October 1, after sections of staff, including engineers, went on strike. Initially, the lock-out was till October 4, but was later extended till October 12.

Meanwhile, senior Government officials said that a mere reply from Kingfisher Airlines that it planned to meet all the requirements that had been listed by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) may not be enough to get it back in the skies.

Officials said that the airline will have to establish that it is in a position to have safe and efficient regular services before it is allowed to restart operations.

“For safe services, the airline will have to convince the DGCA that there are engineers on board. Pilots and planes will have to be airworthy. In addition, the airline has to have a plan and stick to it, which is difficult to believe in the history of the current background of Kingfisher. These things are interlinked,” a senior official said.

>ashwini.phadnis@thehindu.co.in

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