Air India has now plans to increase the number of seats offered on special fares to woo more passengers and restore their confidence in the airline.
Following withdrawal of the pilots' agitation, national carrier Air India today said normalcy has been restored in its operations, both in international and domestic routes.
"All flights are running as per schedule and the on-time performance of all our domestic flights was 89% till 11.30 hours," Air India's executive director (corporate
communication), Jitendra Bhargava, told reporters here.
In New Delhi, 18 of its morning flights, both domestic and international, took off from the IGI airport.
"Flight operations have returned to normal and 18 of our morning flights have taken off for various destination as per schedule," an airlines official in New Delhi said.
Air India has now plans to increase the number of seats offered on special fares to woo more passengers and restore their confidence in the airline, the official said.
A section of Air India's executive pilots had been on a five-day agitation forcing the airline to cancel several flights. The pilots had withdrawn their agitation yesterday following assurances from the management that their demands would be looked into. Bhargava said the airline's long-haul flight Mumbai-New York, which was cancelled yesterday would also operate today.
"Some of the senior officials are at the airport to look after the passengers and restore confidence in them," he said in Mumbai.
The pilots, who had gone on sick leave, are now back at work and reporting for medical check-ups as per regulations of the DGCA, he said. Bhargava said Air India expects the number of passengers it carries to return to the pre-agitation level in the next four to five days.
On an average, Air India carries around 30,000 passengers daily.
Though its passengers were inconvenienced due to the pilots' agitation, the air-carrier is confident it would capture its passenger-base again and has crafted attractive packages to woo them back.
"Bookings were opened yesterday and we are offering attractive fares and ensuring that various categories of passengers are duly rewarded," Bhargava said.
Under the super-saving scheme, the airline offers a reduction of around Rs2,000 on coupon ticket of four and eight on economy-class travel.
Similarly, for executive-class travel, the discount would be around Rs3,000 per coupon ticket, Bhargava said.
In the super-saving scheme, a customer can buy coupon ticket leaflets having four and eight tickets which is mainly targeted at corporate clients.
At the same time, Air India has also reduced the redemption points significantly for its frequent flyers, both domestic and international, Bhargava said. Responding to a question on whether Air India was contemplating any action against its executive pilots for reporting sick and hampering its operations severely, Bhargava said the priority now was to restore the confidence of passengers.
The Management would take note of it, Bhargava said, adding, "no denying the fact that it is an act of indiscipline".
On the revenue loss that the airline suffered due to the five-day agitation by its pilots, Bhargava said, "It is not easy to put a figure to it at this stage. It will take some time to compute the losses."
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