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| Edited By: Sindhu Bhattacharya |Source: DNA |Updated: Mar 17, 2018, 04:52 AM IST
The aviation sector may be on an upswing, but airlines continue to lose money due to manpower issues. Air India and Jet Airways together suffered a loss of Rs127 crore owing to the three strikes by their employees since last year.
The national carrier alone suffered Rs77 crore losses in strikes by pilots and then by employees this May, whereas Jet suffered due to pilot strike. This information was given by civil aviation minister Praful Patel in Parliament Thursday.
In reply to a separate question, the minister said that as on June 30, the total dues of private airlines to the Airports Authority of India (AAI) were Rs304.65 crore.
Kingfisher Airlines was the biggest culprit at Rs184.87 crore followed by Jet Airways (together with JetLite) at Rs50.99 crore. IndiGo, SpiceJet and Go Air owed Rs11.19 crore, Rs11.14 crore and Rs5.29 crore respectively. Paramount owes Rs4.53 crore and others another Rs36.64 crore.
Patel said that “The AAI is in constant touch with the airlines for realisation of dues. Whenever any private airline defaults in making payments, notice for operation on ‘cash & carry’ basis is issued besides recovery of dues from security deposit and other related action.”
Answering another question, Patel said that prior to merger of erstwhile Indian Airlines and Air India, both the airlines suffered a loss of Rs240.29 crore and Rs447.43 crore respectively. But after the merger, Air India suffered a loss of Rs2,226.16 crore and Rs 5,548 crore in 2007-08 and 2008-09 respectively.
“The national carrier is supposed to post a loss of Rs5,400 crore in last fiscal (2009-10),” Patel said, adding losses were incurred due to prevalent economic recession, higher fuel prices, low yields and load factors. The government has proposed to infuse Rs 2,000 crore, in five equal installments, to help the ailing national carrier.
“An amount of Rs800 crore has been released in February and March and provision Rs1,200 crore made in the current financial year. The amount would be released after considering the company’s achievement of their turnaround plan,” Patel said.
