India’s Kingfisher airlines is grounded, for now

India’s Kingfisher Airlines declared a partial lock-out till October 4 after a meeting of the management with its striking engineers ended without an outcome.

Around 270 engineers went on a flash strike from Sunday evening protesting against non-payment of salaries. Employees of the debt-ridden airline have not been paid salaries since March this year.

The crisis at the airline, following the strike by the engineers, was precipitated further on Monday after several pilots also joined in the stir, resulting in flight operations being grounded completely. For the first time since its inception, not a single Kingfisher flight took off or landed across its domestic network on Monday. This after the striking engineers of the airline refused to certify aircrafts as airworthy, thereby not allowing them to operate.