India: in response to the letter sent by Kingfisher Airlines chairman Vijay Mallya to employees, all the employees of the company have set a deadline of 8 pm on 3 April 2012 for the management to pay salary for two months to February 2012.

Kingfisher Airlines

Employees of Indian Kingfisher Airlines want to pay March 2012 salaries by 20 April 2012. Kingfisher Airlines employees have not been paid salary since December 2011. In India the employees of KFA said that they have come to a point where operations have become unsafe due to stress caused by our financial constraints. Meanwhile, at least five Kingfisher Airlines flights out of Mumbai, India and Delhi were canceled on Monday as a section of staff did not report for duty to demand immediate payment of salary and allowance backlog. As some pilots and other staff did not report for work to press for their demands, a meeting between the protestors and the airline’s top management was urgently convened at a hotel in suburban Mumbai, India to resolve the situation.

Kingfisher employees

Employees said in the response that they have come to a point where operations have become unsafe due to stress caused by our financial constraints. Kingfisher Airlines said that it would resume payment of staff salaries starting this week after tax authorities unfroze its bank accounts, the airline’s chairman and managing director, Vijay Mallya, said in a letter to employees.

In February, India’s tax authorities frozen the Kingfisher’s bank accounts, which restricted the carrier’s ability to make salary and other payments to ensure smooth running of its daily operations, resulting in the grounding of several flights. Mallya confirmed that the bank accounts were unfrozen after the airline paid a total of Rs 64 crore to various tax authorities before March 31.