Jet Airways ground staff support management on pilots' stir

Mumbai/New Delhi, Sep.10 (ANI): The Jet Airways ground staff on Thursday said they were behind the management on the issue of the pilots' strike.

The ground staff said they are against the strike and appealed to the pilots to end it, as they feared it would impact on their jobs.

The staff said they were making their appeal without pressure from the management.

Earlier, the management and striking pilots failed to meet the Labour Commissioner on Thursday to resolve their dispute. The pilots, however, promised to show up on Friday at the Labour Commissioner's office.

With the pilots' stir entering its third day on Thursday, the number of flights cancelled has risen to over 230 and passengers are facing a harrowing time.

The pilots have indicated that their agitation will continue till their two sacked colleagues are given their jobs back. They also insisted that their trade union rights could not be curtailed.

The stalemate continued despite five hours of talks between members of the National Aviators Guild (NAG), which is spearheading the stir, and the management through an interlocutor in Delhi. The company does not recognize the NAG and has termed the agitation illegal.

Earlier, Senior Jet Airways officials had said that talks with the striking pilots were still on and there was no breakthrough as yet.

Jet Airways chairman Naresh Goyal met Union Minister of State for Civil Aviation Praful Patel and briefed him about the crisis on Wednesday.

Goyal has reportedly appealed to the Government to step in to resolve the crisis, though Patel refused to comment when asked what was being down to end the stalemate.

Jet Airways yesterday had to suspend all of its flights between the UAE and India after almost half of its pilots did not report for duty.

The management has sacked ten pilots so far. (ANI)