A control room has also been set up in Ahmedabad and the numbers are 9978405304/079-23251900.
Following a significant power outage, operations at the London Heathrow (LHR) have been suspended till 2359 hours (local time) on March 21 (05.30 am March 22, IST).
Air India, in a statement, said it has cancelled a "small" number of flights between November and December on account of delayed return of some aircraft from heavy maintenance and supply chain constraints, without naming the destinations.
The Air India Group has started vacating its offices, which are currently being operated from government-owned properties, from this month, as part of its strategy to consolidate workspaces across the country. The loss-making Air India and its international budget arm Air India Express were taken over by the Tata Group on January 27 this year, after successfully winning the bid for the airline on October 8, last year. Besides these two airlines, Tata Group also holds a majority 51 per cent stake in Vistara, its joint venture airline with Singapore Airlines (SIA), and a 83.67 per cent stake in budget carrier, AirAsia India.
The new owners of Air India will have to retain all the employees of the national carrier for at least one year post which they can offer a VRS. The gratuity, pension fund and post retirement medical benefits of existing and past employees too would be honoured by the new owner, civil aviation secretary Rajiv Bansal said. Tata Sons has emerged as the winning bidder for Air India with the government accepting its Rs 18,000 crore offer to acquire 100 per cent of the debt-laden state-run carrier.
The Centre's push to sell Air India on priority has led to delays in other strategic divestment proposals, such as privatising United India Insurance, as well as ongoing transactions, such as Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) and Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL), revealed multiple officials involved in the process. The Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) is yet to take new privatisation recommendations of the NITI Aayog to the core group of secretaries on disinvestment (CGD) headed by the Cabinet secretary, said one of the officials. The priority now is to ensure all approvals for Air India are in place since the government intends to hand over the national carrier as early as this month.
The panel, which is a sub-committee of the Air India board, was set up on Tuesday following which the executive pilots withdrew their five-day long agitation against slashing of their productivity-linked incentive and flying allowance by half.
Following the incident, all flights at Stansted had to be temporarily grounded, according to British media reports.
Air services to Kathmandu were hit again on Sunday as flights of Air India, SpiceJet and IndiGo failed to land in the earthquake-hit Nepalese capital and returned to New Delhi as ATC personnel at Tribhuvan International Airport were evacuated following a powerful aftershock.
The national carrier currently has 15 recognised trade unions.
A total of Rs 30,000 crore was allocated for five years to Air India by the United Progressive Alliance government in its second term.
In the previous decade, the government, with Praful Patel as the civil aviation minister, saw the introduction of an irrational 5/20 policy.
The DGCA probe detected serious issues related to safety oversight.
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