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Debt laden carrier Kingfisher Airlines issued a statement today seeking an apology from passengers who have been hit by the ongoing agitation by pilots. The airline has been cancelleling flights across its domestic network and has clubbed several others as several pilots and other staffers did not join duty to protest delays in payment of salary.

In February, Kingfisher had filed a new schedule to the regulator Director General of Civil Aviation, reducing the number of daily flights by almost two-thirds to 175 with the help of 28 aircraft, down from about 460 flights a day with 64 planes.

It has accumulated losses of Rs 6,400 crore and piled up debts of Rs 7,000 crore due to high fuel costs.

1.Despite the shortage of crew, Kingfisher Airlines operated 101 flights on March 13th and will operate 101 flights on March 14th.
2.Our prime mission is to maintain schedule integrity by predicting in advance what we can with the sole objective of minimising, if not eliminating guest inconvenience.
3.We try hard 24X7 to inform guests in advance of cancelled or combined flights and to give them the option of travelling on other airlines or to take a full refund.
4.There will, inevitably, be a small number of guests who are inconvenienced partially because we could not access them personally but only via their agents.
5.Kingfisher apologises to all those who were affected.
6.Whilst many of our pilots and engineers have expressed their disappointment, we not only sincerely apologise to them but wish to advise that our Chairman will meet the pilot fraternity on Thursday March 15 in Delhi.
7.There is a lot of sensational speculation and assumption about us.
8.We request one and all to appreciate the serious handicaps we face not only because of our frozen accounts but because of the operating environment. We are working hard to resolve the issues that confront us given the current environment.
9.We would like to confirm that we are curtailing our wide body overseas operations that are bleeding heavily. To this end we have already returned one Airbus A 330-200 to the lessor in the UK. Positive and immediate action is being taken on all fronts to cut costs.
10.We are trying to protect the interests of our valuable employees. We share their pain caused by unpaid salaries and we are also trying to protect their jobs apart from paying salaries.
11.Whatever the schedule we operate, we would like to assure our valued customers that your flights will depart as shown and on time.
12.The suspension of our ICH and BSP accounts with IATA resulted from the freeze of our IATA accounts by the tax authorities.
13.We have, obviously suffered as guests are not able to book seamlessly through IATA travel agents as before. This serious handicap has been partially mitigated by encouraging our travel partners to establish booking arrangements on their individual platforms. Nevertheless, this greatly influences our ability to operate certain flights and it is, therefore, incorrect to assume that pilots are solely responsible.
14.We continue to work with the tax authorities to arrive at a solution to de-freeze our accounts as early as possible.
15.We are also working with our Bankers to realise the urgent interim working capital as approved in the Bankers Consortium meeting held on February 17th. This is not dependant on State Bank of India as widely reported.
16.We fully understand that State Bank of India can only consider additional facilities once our account with them is standard and this has been debated and minuted at the last Consortium meeting.
17.The Government’s final verdict on removing the restriction on investment by a foreign airline within the existing FDI limit of 49% is awaited. We can confirm that there is interest from prospectives on this basis.
18.Finally, we wish to assure all guests, employees and all stakeholders that we are doing our very best.