Kingfisher Airlines
employees heaved a sigh of relief on Monday as a large section of them,
including pilots and engineers , received their salaries after a delay of nearly four months.
Chairman Vijay Mallya had last Tuesday assured his employees that their salaries would be disbursed in a staggered manner from April 4 to 10.
"In fact, we
paid the salaries of all employees on April 4 itself. However, due to some back-end problem in one of the banks, a section of employees could not get it then," sources with the airline said.
The airline has salary accounts in HDFC Bank, Axis Bank and ICICI.
Besides, Kingfisher Airlines has also paid the second installment of Rs 9 crore towards the TDS as per the directives of the Tax tribunal, the source said. The airline has outstanding
dues of about Rs 349 crore.
Mallya is also understood to have informed the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) about the payments made, as the aviation regulator had expressed concern that delays in salaries would
impact Kingfisher's operations and affect the air travellers.
Facing the heat from employees, particularly the pilots and engineers who had had put the airline on notice by giving a deadline of April 20 to clear all their pending dues, Mallya had issued an e-mail to pacify the agitating staff.
Admitting that the salaries were "seriously overdue", Mallya in his letter promised to pay their salaries and other dues in a staggered manner, saying the problem had arisen as its bank accounts were frozen by tax authorities.
The tax authorities had last week de-freezed the accounts on March 31 after the airline paid Rs 44 crore to the Income Tax department and another Rs 20 crore to the Service Tax authorities.
With inputs from agencies
Special 
