UPDATE: 30 Kingfisher flights cancelled

New Delhi, Feb 20. Hundreds of passengers were put to hardship as around 30 flights of cash-strapped Kingfisher Airlines from major Indian cities were cancelled or inordinately delayed on Monday.
As many as 28 Kingfisher flights were also cancelled on Sunday.
Meanwhile, Directorate General of Civil Aviation, the country’s civil aviation regulator, is probing the issue of cancellation of flights and is planning to take action against the beleaguered airline.
According to reports the Kingfisher CEO Sanjay Aggarwal has been summoned by the DGCA even as the airline is going through a rough patch, with employees – including pilots – not having been paid their salaries for some time now.Aggarwal will appear before the DGCA on Tuesday to explain the cancellation of flights.
Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh said on Monday the government does not have any bailout plan for the cash-strapped airline.
"Government is not going to ask banks to bail out any private airline, or any private industry for that matter," Singh was quoted as saying by NDTV.
The airlines cancelled 14 flights in Mumbai, while 3 flights were cancelled in Bangalore. Two more flights have been rescheduled.
Kingfisher has halted its operations from Indore, Raipur and Kolkata, while it is operating only one flight from Patna.
Its international operations to Bangkok, Singapore, Dhaka, and Kathmandu too have been badly hit.
He DGCA is upset as all airlines need its approval before an airline stops operations on any of the sectors that it serves. As recently as December last year, the question of whether the airline’s licence should be allowed to remain valid too had cropped up.
The airline had been running a curtailed schedule till the latest crisis broke out. It was operating only 240 flights after as many as 175 slots allotted to it under the winter schedule were cancelled. Sources said flights from Tier-II and Tier-III cities are likely to remain affected till March-end.
However, agency reports suggest that the airline may get a lifeline from its consortium of bankers who have reportedly agreed to provide interim funding to Kingfisher till such time as it can rope in an equity partner.
Meanwhile, DGCA sources said that the airline has yet to reply to the queries raised by the aviation regulator.The abrupt flight cancellations  had created major problems for passengers waiting to travel after having booked their tickets months in advance, IANS reported.
The developments have also worried passengers intending to travel on KFA flights in the next few days or weeks.
"Last minute cancellations jeopardize our travel and onward plans, while other carriers charge heavily for the same sector if we try to cancel and make alternate bookings," said A.A. Kinariwalla, a manager with a multinational in Mumbai, who is a frequent flier on domestic and international sectors.
A KFA spokesperson blamed the flight disruptions on certain unexpected incidents like 'bird hits' which rendered its aircraft out of service.
The flight disruptions are expected to continue for another three to four days with only 208 flights in operations, but the carrier has not shut down nor does it plan to close down any stations, the official said.
"The speculation that we are reducing our operating schedule from 240 flights a day are ill-founded, as we will operate the full schedule on our booking system within the next four days," the spokesperson added.
While admitting that its bank accounts have been attached by the Income Tax Department, KFA said in the past also similar issues have happened and they have been resolved.
"We have had a good meeting with our consortium of Banks who have accepted, in principle, the viability study prepared by SBI Capital markets and independent consultants. Our request for additional working capital has been acknowledged by the consortium and is subject to individual bank approvals," the spokesperson said.
The developments come after high fuel costs and falling revenue resulted in KFA losses in the third quarter of the current fiscal mounting to Rs.444 crore from a net loss of Rs.254 crore suffered in the like quarter of 2010-11.