Kingfisher Air Hostesses Join Air India

NEW DELHI: He may be old and completely broke, but still has a heart of gold. Air India's Maharaja is now playing Santa to Kingfisher's unpaid crew. On Christmas eve, 36 airhostesses from Mallya's beleaguered airline joined AI.

While timely payment of salaries has become a dream at both AI and Kingfisher Airlines, the crisis in Mallya's airline has suddenly made employees long for the safety of a sarkari job - even if it too happens to be a mostly unpaid one. Before airhostesses, Kingfisher had witnessed an exodus of pilots with nearly 140 leaving in past two to three months.

"We are facing a severe crew shortage because of which our flights keep getting delayed. There are times when pilots are in cockpit but the plane can't operate due to crew shortage.

We are looking out for airhostesses and have got many applications from those serving some other airlines. Some months back, we recruited people from other big airlines for our operation control room at Delhi's IGI Airport," said an AI official, adding the airline is not yet recruiting pilots though it's getting many applications from pilots working in other airlines.

To cut costs, Kingfisher started shutting crew bases in some cities. The airline did not comment on this story. Employees at both companies have become extremely uncertain over salary payment. Source: India Times [Kingfisher Airlines Booking]

Auditors paint a dire picture of Kingfisher, stock down 4%

Kingfisher Airlines has slid 4% on the Bombay Stock Exchange at Rs 24.55 following an audit firm BK Ramadhyani & Co raising doubts over the company’s ability to stay in business for long in the annual general report of the company.

Here are a few observations made by the audit firm
Kingfisher has defaulted repayment on loans taken from banks and institutions.
The airline has not deposited with the government money it collected from employees as tax deducted at source and provident fund contribution, painting a dire picture of the airline's finances.
Kingfisher's ability to remain a ‘going concern’ will depend on its promoters bringing in money into the company.

These observations have unsettled investors who are already wary of the stock as is evident from the heavy sell-off in the stock after the report being posted on the BSE. Kingfisher has underperformed the market in past one quarter, falling 37.38% as against 8.80% decline in the Sensex.

Alongside, even the sagging financials of the airline are a bigger concern for the airline which has never posted profits since its inception in 2005.This is why analysts remain cautious on the stock. Sunil Jain, vice president-equity research at Nirmal Bang believes one should stay away from Kingfisher shares considering the current financial status of the airline.

The airline’s debt currently stands at Rs 6,000 crore and it  posted higher Y-o-Y losses at Rs 263.54 crore from Rs 187.34 crore in the year-ago period owing to high fuel costs. Revenues moved up by around 19% to Rs 1881.64 crore.

Even as analysts remain doubtful on seeing the airline turn-around in the short term, the airline is looking at various ways to improve its balance sheet.

For instance, it re-structured its debt of around Rs 8000 crore to bring down its interest burden. Last month its board approved a rights issue of shares to raise up to Rs 20 billion, but the time frame is not yet decided by the airline.
Source: Moneycontrol

Kingfisher flight makes emergency landing in Delhi

A Kingfisher Airlines flight carrying 118 passengers on Saturday made an emergency landing at the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) airport in New Delhi - barely a few minutes after it took off for Mumbai.

"The commander got an alert from one of the systems on board. He decided to return to Delhi and get this (alert) checked," a Kingfisher Airlines official told IANS.

Flight IT 304 from Delhi to Mumbai took off around 9.00 a.m. but returned after a few minutes, the official said.

"The aircraft made a normal landing and taxied on its own to the parking bay," he added.

The airline company said all passengers on board who had to go through emergency landing protocol and subsequent evacuation procedures were safe and an alternate aircraft was arranged to ferry them to Mumbai.

"Within an hour, an alternate aircraft was arranged for the passengers. The flight was successfully operated," the official said.
Read more at: NDTV
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