Immediately a big cancellation of international flights scheduled while around 100 Air India pilots have gone on a strike at Monday midnight.

A total of 500-strong AI pilots’ union, over 100 Air India pilots have reported in sick and the number of 250 may join in Tuesday that seriously affected International flights scheduled and ultimately passengers’ work.

In Monday night-Tuesday morning’s cancellation, flights from Delhi-Toronto and Delhi-Chicago and from Mumbai-Hong Kong, Mumbai-Newark are cancelled, only Delhi-New York is expected to operate early on Tuesday morning.

Instead of Reacting over this, the ministry has threatened the Air India pilots to shut Air India international flights if the strike snowballs and will take strict action against the agitating pilots.

“Instead of delaying flights by 2-2 hours which is very irksome, we decided to cancel flights as 45 erstwhile AI pilots already reported sick by 11pm on Monday,” a source told reporters.

On Monday night, there was a meeting between the airline management and pilots over the issue of training for the Boeing-787 Dreamliner, the management’s decision that backed by Supreme Court.

However the aviation ministry has rejected following this statement and the angered Erstwhile Air India pilots warned to go on strike work.

A senior official source said, “Following the SC order, erstwhile AI pilots have no right to agitate on the issue of erstwhile IA pilots being sent for training on the Dreamliner in equal numbers. About 22 pilots of AI (international) reported sick minutes after the meeting ended. We will not subject passengers to uncertainty this time and close the international operations of AI. This is not how anyone should behave after tonnes of taxpayers’ money is being used to save the airline.”