Kingfisher mess deepens: More flight disruptions likely

Kingfisher Airlines' flight schedules are expected to get affected far more than what the company gave the public to understand.

While it said around 40 flights would be cancelled out of the 340 it did daily till the other week, there is talks that the number will touch 60 a day till end-December.

At the end of this week, Kingfisher said nearly 300 daily flights would be back in schedule at the earliest. A total of around 250 flights were cancelled during the past week, as the airline struggles to raise resources to pay a host of vendors.

CEO Sanjay Aggarwal said the revised schedule would offer 300 daily flights connecting 54 cities, as compared to the previous schedule of 340 flights. Yet, according to senior officials at chairman Vijay Mallya's UB Group, the cancellations will range at 40-60 flights per day and may, on some days, go further.

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A company spokesperson said they'd stick to cancelling 40 flights per day, and the number might touch 50 on some days.

The airline is maintaining it is carrying out a reconfiguration to fit in more seats in the economy class and this requires up to three aircraft to be out of service over the next three months at any time for this exercise to be completed.

"It will reduce the number of fleet configurations from seven to three, improving operational flexibility. This initiative will add more seats to the fleet, improving revenue production of each aircraft," Aggarwal had claimed.

This is in stark contrast to a statement from chairman Vijay Mallya who, as recently as end-September, told his shareholders the airline operated 370 flights daily to 60 destinations, carrying 12 million guests every year. "Of the cities served by airlines, 11 destinations are served only by Kingfisher," he had said.

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So, within 45 days, the airline has been forced to slash the number of flights from 370 to 300, according to its official statements.

According to some companies in the MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul) industry, the reconfiguration it is doing requires a maximum of four days, once the seats are procured.

"Kingfisher has been procuring seats from Snecma and Recaro and, ideally, for an entire shipset for an A320, it will cost around $300,000.

If you are attempting what Kingfisher Airlines is trying in not changing the entire configuration, but only increasing the number of seats, it will cost at least $100,000 per Airbus aircraft, including the costs of seats and reconfiguration expenses.

This bill alone will cost them around Rs 150 crore, given that Kingfisher has 35 Airbus aircraft," an MRO player told Business Standard.

He added that credits for procuring seats are available in the market.

However, given Kingfisher's troubles, the airline may have to punch above its weight, indicating the reconfiguration of seats may not be the sole reason for such largescale cancellation.