Good times over, help private airlines: Mallya

New Delhi: Kingfisher Airlines owner Vijay Mallya has urged the Government to give private airlines a bailout and not limit its help to Air India.
“Air India is government owned but it is the taxpayer's money. In our case it is the shareholder's money; the shareholders are citizens of our country. If Air India deserves help in opinion of the government, why not private airlines,” Mallya told CNN-IBN on Wednesday, the day his company announced its quarterly loss has increased and it may delay salaries.
Mallya said Kingfisher executive vice-president Hitesh Patel’s letter to employees must not be “overdramatised.”
“This (e-mail) is an extreme case of overdramatisation. All he (Patel) said was that if you received your salary on, say first of every month, you could expect a delay of seven days. He clearly specifies never beyond the seventh. If we have aligned our salary payment date to our collections there is nothing wrong in it.”
Mallya rejected link-ups between Kingfisher and his liquor business.
“The good times for the airline industry were over in 2008 when crude oil prices went up to almost $150 a barrel and state governments chose to maintain their back-breaking sales tax,” said Mallya.
30/07/09 CNN-IBN

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Categories: Kingfisher Jul 2009