76 flights cancelled as AI strike enters Day 2

PTI

New Delhi, 25 May 2010: Air India has cancelled 76 domestic and international flights scheduled for Wednesday on its network as 20,000 employees went on strike, protesting against a gag order issued by the management.

"The flights were scheduled to be operated on domestic as well as international sectors from Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore on ," an airline official said.

The airline decided to cancel flights after reviewing the situation of the availability of the executive engineers, who are not part of the employees’ unions.

No flight could be operated until it is certified by an aircraft engineer, and the number of executive engineers is less than required, the official said.

The national carrier has cancelled 24 of its flights from Delhi, 37 from Mumbai, six from Kolkata, seven from Chennai and two from Bangalore.

List of cancelled flights

From Delhi:

IC 134 to Mumbai via Bhopal-Indore
IC 409 and IC 415 to Patna
IC 411 and IC 811 to Lucknow
IC 413 and IC 813 to Kathmandu
IC 445 to Ludhiana
IC 471 to Mumbai via Jodhpur -Udaipur.
AI 638 to Amritsar
IC 817 and IC 861 to Ahmedabad
IC 821 to Jammu-Srinagar
IC 849 to Pune
IC 864 to Chandigarh
IC 869 to Raipur-Nagpur
IC 889 to Guawahati-Imphal
IC 896 to Jaipur
AI 747 and IC 895 to Dubai
AI 480 to Singapore
AI 841 to Abu Dhabi
AI 853 to Bangkok
IC 885 to Muscat

From Mumbai: three flights to Ahmedabad; six to Delhi, four to Chennai, two each to Bangalore, Goa, Hyderabad, Nagpur, Muscut and Cochin, and one each to Bangkok, Dubai, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, Kozikode, Aurangabad, Lucknow, Varanasi, Rajkot, Jamnagar, Jaipur, Raipur, Bhubaneshwar, Udaipur and Jodhpur were also cancelled.

The national carrier has cancelled its six flights from Kolkata to Agartala, Bagdogra, Silchar, Dibrugarh, Imphal and Port Blair, while seven flights from Chennai to Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Mumbai, Coimbatore, Bhubaneshwar, Bangalore-Cochin, and Bangalore-Trivandrum.

Two flights from Bangalore to Mumbai and Male in Maldives were also cancelled, the official said.

Yesterday, over 20,000 employees went on a flash strike to protest Air India’s gag order that hit flight operations.

The management has threatened stern action including termination of service if the agitation continued.