IANS/New Delhi
Flag carrier Air India yesterday cancelled 185 flights due to a strike by nearly half its 1,600 pilots, as a court issued notice to nine union leaders for criminal contempt of court for disobeying an order to immediately end the protest.A two-member bench of the Delhi High court issued the notice to the nine pilots who are members of the Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA, the union that has called the strike, for ignoring a stay order on the protest last Friday.“All the nine should remain present in the court while the criminal contempt proceedings shall be carried out on May 25,” judges B D Ahmed and Veena Birbal said.The nine including the president and general secretary are: A S Bhinder, Rishab Kapoor, Ramesh Gangadharan, Rajesh Kuyeskar, Ritesh Mathankar, Nitin Mahengade, Anup Jain, Amitesh Ahuja and Sakeel Naqvi.“We will continue our strike. We are prepared to face any consequence. We know we are right and we have the support of 800 pilots with us,” Bhinder said after the court notice. “We will also appeal against this notice soon.”Close to half of Air India’s 1,600 pilots, who were earlier working for the now defunct Indian Airlines have been on strike since April 26 midnight, demanding parity in pay with their counterparts in Air India. Indian Airlines was merged with Air India in 2007.As the strike entered the seventh day, a senior Air India official said: “We operated around 40 flights on our domestic network today and some 185 flights were cancelled. So far, the strike has caused a direct loss of over Rs70 crore (Rs700mn).”The official said the curtailed operation of the airline was still on and that the load factor of passengers had also reduced since fresh bookings were stalled until May 6. “We will be able to tide over this soon.”Under the new contingency plan the airline will run 100-120 flights on the domestic and regional overseas sector, including the operations of the sister domestic budget carrier as long as the strike continues, the official said.Air India has also hired an Airbus aircraft of Kingfisher Airlines to lessen the burden of passengers. Under the operations plan, the airline will fly fewer flights and only use wide-bodied aircraft.During the hearing on contempt proceedings, the court appointed senior advocate Sidharth Luthra amicus curiae to assist in the impasse between the management and its striking pilots, and asked the two sides to “put an end” to it immediately.The observations sought by the amicus curiae, literally meaning friend of the court in Latin, will be on point of law and it will be up to the court to decide whether or not to admit such information while adjudicating the case.The judges on Monday started hearing criminal contempt proceedings against the office bearers of the union for ignoring a stay order on the strike.“You are causing huge loss to the nation. Tell us who will pay this bill,” judges asked both the management and the striking union.“By disrupting the life of our citizens, you are causing a great loss to the nation and the citizens both. This loss has now to be taken from the tax-payer. Citizens will have to pay doubly.”The management, meanwhile, sought public support for its actions, even questioning if the strike was justified.“Majority of them (striking pilots) draw over Rs3.88 lakhs (Rs388,000) per month and up to Rs7 lakh per month, besides other benefits, including free passages,” the state-run airline said in an advertisement released in newspapers.“Over 10,000 esteemed passengers (are) stranded daily. Over 40,000 inconvenienced so far,” said the airline, asking: “Should financially critical Air India, on government support, succumb to such blackmail?”The airline has also decided not to pay the striking pilots during the duration of their protest and withdraw the free passage on the airline’s flights given to them and their families, sources said.The pilots, meanwhile, wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh again and reiterated their demand for pay parity, and a thorough probe into its alleged financial mismanagement.They have already demanded the ouster of chairman and managing director Arvind Jadhav. But the government has, thus far, fully backed the Air India management, and refused talks until the pilots call off their protest and report back to their stations.