The cash-strapped Kingfisher Airlines has run into fresh trouble with the service tax department freezing some more of its bank accounts for missing the deadline for clearing its dues.
Sources indicated that the airline owes Rs 40 crore in tax arrears. The move comes as the airline failed to make a Rs 20-crore payment by February 29. The airline was given time till February 29 to clear a part of the payment and until March 31 to pay off all the arrears of about Rs 70 crore.
This is not for the first time that the accounts of Kingfisher have been frozen. Since November 2011, the airline had paid only a little over Rs 30 crore, sources indicated.
In a recent email to its staff, the airline's Chairman, Mr Vijay Mallya, had blamed the freezing of accounts for the delay in payment of salaries.
“We are currently handicapped as our bank accounts are frozen by the tax authorities. I have been working tirelessly to urgently resolve this issue through negotiations and I hope these efforts will be successful early next week. We fully intend to pay our tax dues as much as we are committed to pay your salaries,” the Chairman's email of February 27 stated.
Revised schedule
Meanwhile, official sources said that the airline's schedule for operating 175 flights a day domestically and 24 daily services to international destinations was recently approved by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. The airline has indicated that the schedule is based on a fleet of 28 aircraft.
The airline's staffers, however, indicated that it was left to the discretion of individual Kingfisher pilots to decide whether they would want to fly or not. “It is difficult to give the (exact) number of pilots who are not operating flights, as it is an individual's choice, although it would seem that in Mumbai there have been a number of pilots who have refused to operate,” airline sources said.