IANS

Mumbai, Sep 13: Even as Jet Airways limped back to normalcy Sunday after a five-day stir by over 500 pilots, the stand-off has proved costly for the airline - a loss of over Rs.2 billion ($40 million).

A grim Executive Director Saroj Dutta revealed to mediapersons Sunday afternoon that on an average the airlines is patronized by nearly 24,000 passengers daily across its network spanning domestic and international sectors.

"On an average, our daily revenues are in the range of $8 million (Rs.40 crore), so you can calculate how much we stand to lose for the past five days," he said.

However, he pointed out that there were minor savings on certain variables, like aircraft turbine fuel (ATF) since the flights did not operate.

Moreover, during the past five days the airline made attempts to transfer nearly 60 percent of the passengers on other airlines and a small number even to its sister airline, JetLite.

Dutta announced the setting up of a consultative body comprising representatives of the management and the staff to resolve pending issues concerning the pilots.

The committee includes two directors of the company and the chief executive officer plus two pilots representatives to ensure smooth functioning and proper implementation of its decisions.

As the crisis ended, the management also decided to re-instate four sacked pilots and not initiate any action against the nearly 500 pilots who agitated last week, Dutta said.

"It's an amicable settlement and all pilots would report for duties immediately," Dutta said.

The company would also not pursue the pending contempt petition before the Bombay High Court which was slated to come up for hearing tomorrow (Monday), he added.

Following an end to the five-day long pilots' stir, Jet Airways limped back to normal operations with plans to operate as many at 37 flights, including two on the international sector, here Sunday.

The operations are expected to completely normalize by the evening when the rostering of duties for the pilots is done and the airline would announce resumption of more operations.

Until then, the airline has announced cancellations of 15 international and 137 domestic flights across the network.

Two international services - Mumbai-Dubai and return - would be operated as combined services to accommodate the maximum number of passengers.

On the domestic sector, flights would be operated on the Mumbai-Delhi, Vadodara-Mumbai, Delhi-Mumbai, Mumbai-Bengaluru, Mumbai-Mangalore (including return), Mumbai-Hyderabad (return), Mumbai-Chennai, Ahmedabad-Delhi, Delhi-Lucknow (return), Delhi-Vadodara (return), Madurai-Chennai, Chennai-Coimbatore, and Chennai-Bengaluru (return) routes.