The King of Good Times now facing bad times

Sep 23, 2008 The Workplace, Travel

Vijay Mallya promoted Kingfisher Airlines plans to lay off around 300 employees.

The airline said it was part of an integration process with the former Air Deccan (which became Simplifly Deccan and now known as Kingfisher Red).

The company said, ”Many employees were counselled on their career path progression and best utilisation of their individual skill sets. As a result, a set of 300 employees have chosen to move on and have parted ways with the company and/or put in their resignations.”

Around 5% of this lot is from Kingfisher Airlines, and the rest from Deccan, with 200 employees in the airline’s security department, 50 from flight operations and 50 from engineering and maintenance. They would be paid the equivalent of two months’ gross salary for every completed year of service subject to a minimum of three months’ pay-out.

Thanks to the worldwide economic slowdown and spiralling crude prices, Kingfisher has cut flights by at least 22 per cent from its domestic and international network. They’ve also deferred delivery of around 29 narrow-bodied aircraft.

Remains to be seen how quickly they are able to ‘fly’ out of this black hole…