Hundreds of passengers at airports across the country were caught unawares on Tuesday as Air India employees went on a flash strike after the airline issued a gag order against its staff.
Hundreds of passengers at airports across the country were caught unawares on Tuesday as Air India (AI) employees went on a flash strike after the airline issued a gag order against its staff.
While passengers had to put up with delayed or cancelled flights, the strike by crew engineers and ground staff belonging to the Air Corporation Employees Union (ACEU) came as a jolt to the beleaguered airline, which is deep in the red.
After noon, 42 flights across the country, including seven from Mumbai, were cancelled. “Some flights were delayed or combined,” said the AI’s spokesperson. Passengers will have to bear the inconvenience at least till Wednesday evening as the ACEU is in no mood to call off the strike. “On May 26, the management has called us for a meeting to resolve the issue. We will not back off unless they withdraw the gag order,” said Vivek Rao, regional secretary, ACEU.
Explaining the anger of the airline staff, Rao said: “The airline management issued a gag order (on Tuesday morning) against union leaders telling them not to speak to the media. They did this despite us deferring our nationwide walkout on May 28 because of the Mangalore crash.”
He added: “We despatched a team of 75 people to help them deal with the crisis in Managlore. But rather than being cooperative, the management has gone ahead and issued a gag order.” The ACEU had served a notice to the AI about staging a walkout on May 28 as the airline had deferred May salaries to June 7 instead of May-end.
The reason behind the gag order, an AI engineer said, was this: a Bangalore-Delhi plane, an Airbus 320, was asked to make a technical halt at Mangalore on May 22, the day an Air India Express flight crashed there. The plane was carrying relatives of the crash victims.
At Mangalore, no AI engineer was present to certify the plane to fly out. So, a Kingfisher engineer, apparently not qualified to certify an Airbus 320, was asked to do it. When the plane reached Delhi, AI engineers refused to re-certify it. They told the media they would file a complaint with the directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA) about the rule violation. Angered, the management issued the gag order.
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