Well if it’s one, it’s anohter. And it’s Kingfisher now in the spotlight with two big things happening to them.
For alliance lovers out there and what caps a bad day for OneWorld with Malev falling down, Kingfisher is to suspend it’s current ascent into OneWorld to allow it to reorganise its current fiscal position – and if you watch this blog, you’ll know the answer to that is “Not great”.
The planned join date of 10th February 2012 has been scrubbed, with no new date given.
Oneworld chief executive Bruce Ashby said: “These are turbulent times for the airline industry in India and many other parts of the world. We have been working closely with Kingfisher Airlines over the past months and it has become increasingly clear recently that the airline needs more time to resolve the financial issues it is confronting before it can be welcomed into Oneworld.
“Will work with Kingfisher Airlines with the aim of setting a new joining date once it is through this current period of turbulence,”
Even Kingfisher Airlines Chairman – Vijay Mallya accepts there is a problem, and quotes:
“In light of the many priorities centred around Kingfisher Airlines’ recapitalisation efforts, we felt it prudent to defer our entry into the alliance for a little while. This will allow us the opportunity to focus on the issues at hand and we look forward to being part of the Oneworld alliance very shortly
Maybe more importantly that Kingfisher has been suspended from the IATA ticketing clearing house to processing interlined tickets between airlines. In real terms international airlines will not be able to honour Kingfisher issued coupons or tickets.
Without access to the interline booking system, that is a fair amount of change that Kingfisher won’t be able to access.
Whilst Kingfisher protests it’s an internal systems failure and saying it has paid, IATA is remaining very quiet. Too quiet to say “It’s all fine now”.
I’m not a betting person, but with the state of some of Kingfisher, unless it finds a pit of money quickly there could be another airline casualty of the year extremely quickly.
