With Kingfisher Airlines gripped by an acute financial crisis, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today said that he would speak to Civil Aviation Minister Vayalar Ravi to see how to get the Vijay Mallya-owned airline, which has cancelled at least 210 flights in the past week, out of trouble.
Speaking to reporters en route to New Delhi from the Maldives where he had gone to attend the SAARC Summit, the Prime Minister said: “Private sector airlines have to be managed efficiently but if they do get into difficulty, we have to find ways and means to help them get out of the process.”
He said that although he has “not applied” his mind to Kingfisher’s trouble, he would talk to the Civil Aviation Minister upon his arrival in New Delhi to see how the airline can be helped. The airline had sought government intervention for getting low-cost debt.
Kingfisher has suffered a loss of Rs 1,027 crore in 2010-11 and has a mounting debt of Rs 7057.08 crore. Other airlines are hit too: in the latest quarterly results, Jet Airways posted losses of over Rs 700 crore and Spice Jet of Rs 240 crore.
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