Kingfisher: Vijay Mallya clarifies layoffs, bailout doubts

Mumbai, Nov 15: UB Group chairman and the chief of Kingfisher Airlines, Vijay Mallya tried to clarify all doubts that have been bruising him and his organisation since last few weeks. Mallya, during a press conference on Tuesday, Nov 15 announced that Kingfisher Airlines will not be shut down and there were no layoffs plan yet.

Clarifying his stand on the issue of asking for bailout from the central government, Mallya said, "We have never asked government to pay from the tax payers money. I have also not applied for any restructuring and have asked for additional working capitals from banks."

"We decided to phase out Kingfisher Red. Unfortunately this was misconstrued as shutting down, which is not true. We have carefully evaluated over the last month the yield that's we get in all 3 classes of services - Kingfisher 1, Regular (Class) and no frill- Kingfisher Red. Our yields in Kingfisher class was much higher than Kingfisher red. We were making a lot more on yield than spending," asserted the UB Group chairman.

However, Mallya did not fail to address the Kingfisher flights cancellation issue as he said, "We cannot, as a private company, fly routes that are heavily loss-making."

"Cancellation of loss-making routes was a commercially prudent decision," said Mallya whose company reported to have faced a loss in the fiscal second quarter on higher fuel prices and operating costs.

OneIndia News