NEW DELHI: India's struggling flagship airline Air India began its international operations Wednesday. Operations to Europe and the United States were started as a part of its contingency plan to reinstate normalcy. Hundreds of Air India pilots were staying away from work and had called in sick as an attempt to make the management accept their demands in a dispute over training. As the stir by the pilots entered its second week Air India clubbed many of its flights to stabilize its international operations. “We have put in force our contingency plan and started operating our international flights, which were affected for the past eight days causing great inconvenience to our customers. Slowly, we hope that our operations would normalize,” an Air India official said. Air India was compelled to stop its International operations on Monday after 16 pilots called in sick. The pilots are protesting against former Indian Airlines pilots who were moved to Air India after the merger of Indian Airlines and Air India in 2007. The pilots think this move threatens their career prospects. “We have deployed Airbus 320 aircraft for our short haul flights to Bangkok, Singapore and other destinations,” he said. After the protest Air India was forced to cancel its flights from Paris, Riyadh, Toronto and Tokyo. The airline operates a fleet of Boeings and Airbus aircrafts that serve Asia, Europe and North America.
