The cash-strapped Kingfisher Airlines has no plans to shut down, the airline said today.

In the statement issued on Sunday, the airline said that its Chief Executive Officer, Mr Sanjay Aggarwal, had met with pilots and appealed to them not to stay away from flying duties which would potentially affect its operating schedule.

Pilots, however, maintain that at the meeting Mr Aggarwal said that if the employees were not in a correct frame of mind to fly they need not. The meeting was held as pilots, like several other employees of the airline, have not been paid their wages for the past three months. At the moment the airline has no shortage of pilots, a message that was communicated at a recent meeting that Mr Aggarwal had with the Director-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), Mr E.K. Bharat Bhushan. Official sources indicated that the airline, which has a fleet of about 28 aircraft, has about 510 pilots.

“Even when the management has about 44 aircraft operating as it has claimed will happen soon, it will have more than 70 excess pilots,” sources said.

The DGCA recently cleared the airline's revised schedule for operating 175 domestic and 24 international flights a day.

Kingfisher's operations have been in jeopardy for some time now for a variety of reasons including the fact that some aircraft have been taken back by lessors, the tax authorities have frozen its accounts for non-payment of dues and it has been unable to pay wages to its employees.

The airline statement adds that it is trying its “very best” to cooperate with the tax authorities and get its “accounts unfrozen at the earliest so that normalcy could be restored, employee salaries paid and further aircraft recoveries started”.

The Service Tax Department has frozen the accounts of the airline for not paying its dues.

> ashphadnis@thehindu.co.in

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