Nationwide strike called off; 'Indian' soars again

New Delhi, June 14: All flights of 'Indian' took to the skies again as more than 12,000 employees of the state-owned carrier called off their nationwide two-day strike today after an agreement with the airline management. Earlier, several flight cancellations across the country through the day, the maximum of 25 from Mumbai, caused unbearable inconvenience for the passengers.

''The strike has been called off and the issues are being amicably settled,'' Civil Aviation Secretary Ashok Chawla said after a three-hour meeting between the management and the agitating employees in the presence of the Chief Labour Commissioner.

According to Ministry sources, the Government has agreed to pay wage arrears by 2008 and also revoke suspension notices served on 23 striking employees.

The Rs 267 crore arrear package offered to the employees also stands, the sources said.

The employees, under the aegis of the Air Corporation Employees Union (ACEU), had gone on a flash strike on Tuesday night after their talks with the management on wage arrears and career promotion broke down.

The strike caused chaos at all major airports across the country with a large number of flights being cancelled or delayed, leaving thousands of passengers stranded.

Only 127 out of 192 scheduled flights took off this morning, before the strike was called off.

In Mumbai, 25 flights were cancelled this morning including those for Delhi, Goa, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Nagpur.

''We operated only 12 flights this morning,'' Indian spokesperson told sources.

In Kolkata, 14 'Indian' flights were cancelled this morning, including those to Port Blair, Mumbai, Delhi, Bangkok, Agartala, Dibrugarh, Guwahati, Aizwal, Bagdogra, Kathmandu, Jaipur, Chennai and Bangalore.

Passengers, specially those to north eastern states like Asom, Tripura and Mizoram faced problems because of the cancellation of flights. In the morning, only three flights were operated to Guwahati, Silchar and Dimapur.

From Kerala, as many as 13 'Indian' flights were cancelled and several others delayed before the airline employees called off their strike. The IC 590 Sharjah-Thiruvananthapuram-Chennai, IC 169 Delhi-Mumbai-Thiruvananthapuram and IC 967 flight to Sharjah were cancelled from the international airport Thiruvananthapuram, sources said, adding several inter-flights were delayed, some of them for more than five hours.

Five flights from the Nedumbassery international airport were cancelled -- IC 502 Agathi-Kochi, IC 166 Kochi-Mumbai-Delhi, IC 165 Delhi-Mumbai-Kochi, IC 976 Sharjah-Kochi-Chennai and IC 998 Bahrain-Doha-Kochi.

Two flights flew out of Kochi -- IC 909 Bangalore-Kochi- Thiruvananthapuram and IC 997 Kochi-Kozhikode-Bahrain-Doha. The sources claimed that the strike had not affected the operations of the airport as most of the ground work was handled by Air India staff.

Five flights from Karippur international airport were cancelled and several flights delayed, a report from Kozhikode said.

The cancelled flights from Kozhikode were IC-598 Goa-Mumbai, IC-926 Chennai, IC-998 Kochi, IC-538 Dubai and IC-658 Coimbatore-Mumbai-Delhi, Airlines' Station Manager N Kannan told sources.

He said alternative arrangements were being made to fly the stranded passengers to their respective destinations by other airlines.

In Andhra Pradesh, eight flights were cancelled from the Begumpet Airport in Hyderabad.

Indian (Indian Airlines) PRO C Krishnan told UNI