One third of Kingfisher flights stand cancelled

Cash-strapped Kingfisher Airlines has been hit by some major flight cancellations as the Vijay Mallya-led carrier struggles to continue daily operations.

According to sources, the total daily flights operated by the airline are down to 160 from 240 per day in the last two days and the airline has stopped taking bookings for Mumbai-Delhi-Mumbai flights to accommodate passengers of cancelled flights.
The source said these 80-odd cancelled flights include certain flights scheduled from/or to cities including Lucknow, Patna, Srinagar, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Pune and Ahmedabad. On the international routes, a source said flights to Dhaka and Bangkok have also been affected. However, these could not be immediately verified with the airline.

A detailed query mailed to a company spokesperson remained unanswered till the time of going to the press.
sources said bookings for Mumbai-Delhi-Mumbai flights were stopped to accommodate passengers from the cancelled

Delhi-Bangalore and Delhi-Pune flights, said the source.
Passengers suffered severe hardships as the beleaguered carrier cancelled several flights from some key cities and completely shut down operations from Kolkata, including international flights, for about ten days.

Kingfisher's services to Singapore were also affected as its website showed there were no flights available for the next ten days. Same was the case for Bangkok. In Hyderabad, the cash-strapped carrier has three flights to Bangalore, Chennai and Vijayawada on scheduled cancellation.

Kingfisher has been struggling to stay afloat with huge debt woes and working capital issues.  Over the past few months, the airline has also seen a significant exodus by pilots. Meeting high fuel costs and servicing payments to lessors for its leased aircraft are the other challenges the airline faces.