Tata-owned airline Air India Express has recently sacked 25 of its employees who reported ‘sick leave’ yesterday, thus, leading to the cancellation of over 90 flights.
As reported by ANI, due to their behavior, dozens of passengers suffered. In the next 20 minutes, the airline will later issue a statement.
Further, the airline had also issued an ultimatum to striking cabin crew to get back to their work by 4 pm on Thursday.
This development coincides with a time when a merger process with AIX Connect (AirAsia India) is ongoing.
Adding more complexity to the merger, the cabin members continue to put up protest against alleged injustices during their employment.
Meanwhile, the sudden disruption in flight’s operation has caused chaos and distress among affected travellers. Who reportedly reached the airline counter and demanded explanations behind this move.
In order to quell the chaos, the airline later asked the passengers to schedule their flights on Wednesday.
“The situation is dynamic as senior cabin crew are reporting sick at the last minute, just before they are to operate flights. While we are proactively cancelling flights till next Monday, the actual number may differ depending on crew turnout. We are minimizing international disruptions and less than 20% of the cancellations will be of our overseas flights.” said airline sources
Later, the affected passengers were also offered refund or an option of rescheduling their flights at no additional cost.
As per Air India spokesperson, even though they are trying to engage with crew to understand these occurrences, but they are also trying to minimize any inconvenience which is caused to the passengers.
With over 80% airline occupancy these days, around 13,000 passengers were affected by such cancellations.
Currently, Tata Group Airline Merger, it has declared to cut 40 flights daily till May 13.