A-I suspends Hong Kong flights due to "poor load"

MUMBAI: Air-India (A-I) on Monday decided to "temporarily discontinue" its flights to Hong Kong due to poor loads even as the ongoing tussle between A-I management and Indian Pilots'' Guild (IPG) has led to the former charge-sheeting 12 unionised pilots.
"The flights to Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam are also being temporarily discontinued because of non-availability of adequate number of executive pilots", A-I Spokesperson Jitendra Bhargava told newspersons here.
Referring to IPG''s "agitation", he said, "we call it a strike because the fact remains that they have stayed away from work. They had also issued a copy of directives to the regional labour commissioner (RLC) on April 8 and did not turn up for the proceedings today".
"Since no representative from IPG came for the proceedings we went ahead with our presentation. RLC will finalise its report and send it to the Government", he added.

On the chargesheets issued to the pilots, Bhargava said they have been given 48 hours to reply and A-I was in the process of appointing enquiry officers. He also did not rule out further suspensions. So far 27 pilots have been suspended.
Bhargava said with all the cancellations and rescheduling about 20 per cent of A-I''s passengers would be affected.

Referring to the contingency plan, he said A-I would come out with a 15 day schedule after the current one ends on April 30 midnight.