Air India resumes flights to Maldives

Male: Indian flag-carrier, Air India today resumed its flights from Trivandrum to the Maldives as pilots Friday ended a 10-day strike that cost the ailing airline millions of dollars in lost revenues.
Maldivians travelling to Trivandrum faced difficulties and some were stranded as some 700 pilots working for the domestic service of state-run Air India launched the strike to demand wage parity with colleagues flying international routes.
The strikers, who climbed down from demands for immediate pay parity with pilots flying international routes and accepted government promises to look into their complaints, were all from the former state-run domestic carrier Indian Airlines, which was merged in 2007 with international carrier Air India in a bid to create a more cost-efficient national carrier.
Air India posted losses of 34.5 billion rupees (US$771 million) in the first half of the last fiscal year on top of a loss of 55.5 billion rupees (US$1.23 billion) during the previous 12 months, according to government figures.
The walkout forced Air India to cancel 70 to 80 percent of its domestic flights, costing it about 150 million rupees (US$3.35 million) a day in revenues, an Air India official told AFP.
08/05/11 haveeru online

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Categories: Air India May 2011, Foreign May 2011