Kingfisher submits fresh schedule to DGCA

Kingfisher Airlines, which is now operating much lesser number of flights than in November, will not operate direct flights to some major cities and several Tier II cities now on, as per the truncated schedule it has submitted to the aviation regulator.

Among the cities to which it will not operate direct flights include Jaipur, Thiruvananthapuram, Nagpur and even Hyderabad, sources said quoting the fresh schedule the airline submitted to the Directorate-General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

Kingfisher flyers who wish to travel to such destinations will have to be routed through other cities like its base in Mumbai or Bangalore.

The airline has also informed the DGCA that it will for bring into service 16 more planes in the next week or 10 days, in addition to the 28 it has promised to the regulator. The 28 operational aircraft are 13 Airbus A-320s, four Airbus A-330s and 11 turbo-prop ATRs.

The airline, which has been cancelling an average of 40- 60 flights a day since last Friday, has said that it had no shortage of pilots. Now,  their strength is 510. A batch of 10 pilots is needed to fly one aircraft a day.

Sources said the airline was likely to lose several prime flying slots due to the recent large-scale flight cancellations. A flying slot is actually a period of time within which a plane has to take-off.

Kingfisher has told the DGCA that its Mumbai-Singapore service, stalled for over a week, is likely to resume shortly, the sources said. Frequencies on major trunk routes have also been substantially curtailed. The new schedule is subject to approval by the DGCA.