7 Air India Express flights cancelled as pilots' stir hits airline

Seven flights Air India Express were cancelled with about 12 pilots of Air India's budget carrier reporting sick as negotiations between a section of pilots and the management over career progression continued through the day on Tuesday.

However, not a single flight of the parent airline was disrupted, an Air India spokesperson said.

The meeting between the representatives of the Indian Pilots' Guild (IPG) and senior management continued till late this evening, with the latter hoping that "a solution will be arrived at shortly".

Maintaining that Air India's flight operations were running normally, the spokesperson said the management was already in discussions with the IPG and was "confident of finding an early solution to the issue".

Air India operated its full schedule of over 425 flights both yesterday and today, airline sources said.

However, at least seven flights of the budget carrier, Air India Express, were cancelled as about a dozen pilots reported sick, the sources said. Most of these pilots belong to the pre-merger Air India who were transferred to the low-cost carrier about two years ago.

The sources said all efforts were being made to maintain the AI Express services to and from the Gulf due to the pre-Eid rush in passenger traffic. The sectors affected included those in East and Southeast Asia, they said.

The pilots, owing allegiance to the IPG which has pilots of the erstwhile Air India as its members, have been at loggerheads with the management charging it with adopting discriminatory attitude against them vis-a-vis their erstwhile Indian Airlines counterparts.