Devising a strategy to make the airlines cough up huge amounts of money owed by it to oil companies, the latter disrupted oil supply to its planes for ninety minutes yesterday
Devising a strategy to make the airlines cough up huge amounts of money owed by it to oil companies, the latter disrupted oil supply to its planes for ninety minutes yesterday
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The state owned oil companies have devised a strategy to help them tackle defaulting airlines cutting the oil supply for brief periods at regular intervals, so that the airline companies are pressured into coughing up the pending money.
In the last few months, oil companies have stopped supplying oil to the national carrier, as pay back for non-payment of dues.
A similar fate befell the Kingfisher airlines last Monday, as the oil companies stopped supplying oil for one-and-a-half hours, between 6 pm and 7.30 pm.
"Yes, it is true that the oil companies stopped supplying to the Kingfisher airlines, to put pressure on them to pay their dues.
However, the matter was settled after the intervention of top officials from the Civil Aviation Ministry and the Petroleum Ministry.
It was agreed that the airline would be given time for their payment, and would clear all their dues in that period," said a top official from the Civil Aviation ministry.
According to sources at the Mumbai airport, the Kingfisher services became non operational for more than one-and-a-half hours, due to the disrupted oil services.
"The flight services were resumed after the matter was settled by top officials in Delhi. All Kingfisher flights operated, but were delayed," added the source.
The airline sources also revealed that Air India services had also been put on hold, due to the non-clearance of oil dues.
"Both the Kingfisher and Air India jointly owe more than 3,500 crores to oil companies. While the former owes 1,000 crores, the latter owes 2,500 crores to the airports," said an aviation ministry official.
A Petroleum Ministry official justified the steps taken by oil companies, maintaining that this was a last ditch attempt to tackle the defaulters, "We don't have any other option left to tackle these people.
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We need money to run our show. If the airline companies don't make the payment, then the cuts will be for a longer durations in the future."
The Other Side
Kingfisher spokesperson Prakash Mirpuri said, "Yesterday, a misunderstanding with one of our vendors resulted in the delay of 12 flights, of a daily time-table of more than 370 flights, were delayed. The issue has since been resolved since, and it back to business as usual. We apologise for any inconvenience caused to our guests."
Bhajji sues
Yesterday, Indian cricketer Harbhajan Singh sued the airline for offensive content in an advertisement published by UB group, which owns the airline.
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