Abu Dhabi: Air India is not taking any new bookings for the next three days for flights it operates in the Middle East and Africa, Abhay Pathak, the airline's regional manager told Gulf News on Saturday.
Up to 90 per cent of Air India's flights have been affected by a pilots' strike that entered its fourth day yesterday.
"Instead of the Airbus A321 operating on the Delhi and Mumbai routes from Dubai, we have substituted it with Boeing 747-400 aircraft to accommodate all passengers. The passengers from Abu Dhabi, from where we have two daily flights, are being brought to Dubai," Pathak said.
"For the Sharjah-Amritsar flight we are clubbing with the Dubai-Amritsar flight of Air India Express. For Hyderabad, we have chartered a flight from Air Arabia, while the Dubai-Goa flight has been cancelled and the passengers bound for that flight have been transferred to Qatar Airways," he added.
Kerala-bound passengers
Pathak said all Kerala-bound passengers are being put on Air India Express flights operating from Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
"The same flight schedules will be repeated tomorrow, if the current situation continues. We are calling our passengers and updating them on the sitution," Pathak added.
Meanwhile, according to a Bloomberg report, close to 150 flights were grounded yesterday as nearly half of Air India's 1,600 pilots continued their strike despite facing a possible six-month jail sentence for contempt of court and amid talks of a partial lockout.
Air India has reportedly cancelled 150 flights and re-scheduled 35 out of its daily 225 domestic network. While 60 flights were cancelled in Mumbai, 14 were grounded in Kolkata and 12 in Kerala.
"We will operate just around 40 flights nationally, which includes 13 flights from Delhi, where on an average we have 52 flights," a senior Air India official with the operational arm of the airline told the news wire.
According to the official, 100 domestic flights of its subsidiary arm of Alliance Air were still operating.
"Only the operations of Air India's main domestic arm are affected. Our subsidiary Alliance Air is still active with 100 flights on the national network," the official said. He added the airline on Thursday adopted a reduced operations plan in which fewer flights by wide-bodied aircraft would be operated.
"Currently, our operations are going on smoothly. As we have stopped ticket bookings, passenger loads will also come down and we will be able to tide over this period," the official said.
He rubbished talks about a possible lockout of Air India, and termed them baseless rumours floated by the unions.
"These are just rumours being floated about a lock-out and nothing more. How can the national carrier be locked out? We have enough executive pilots to operate our flights," the official said.
— With inputs from Bloomberg
