As Live from a Lounge has covered, the good times of Kingfisher may be drawing to a close according to The Hindu Times.
Kingfishers bank accounts are in a very precarious state – that of being frozen. Only 16 planes out of a 64 fleet strong aircraft are serviceable.
It also seems the lack of pay has forced employees to jump ship with 35 commanders jumping to IndiGo and crew and ground staff resigning en-mass.
Around 100 captains are left at Kingfisher to operate its Airbus A320 fleet, and has forced the closure of Kolkata based operations after most of the ground staff quit.
As has been written about before, Kingfisher has missed payments to oil companies and airports, and has failed to make a profit since it commenced operations in 2005, and has had its OneWorld membership suspended until it can sort its fiances out.
With a walkout like that, there’s less chances of that each day.
Kingfisher are pulling every last string with them blaming tax departments (who Kingfisher have failed to pay), the press for the constant bad reports, and no doubt the staff who are abandoning ship.
But as Spanair, Malev and Air Australia, if you don’t operate the routes, and have the income along with the cashflow, you can’t operate. And I’ve got this feeling with everything collapsing, the cash flow is pretty much dry by now.
And I’m sorry Kingfisher – that point of no return is coming awful fast unless they find a sugar-daddy to put them back in the air in the very near future.
I’ll let you guess the likelihood of that happening.
