Sitting in his constituency in Gondia, Maharashtra, on Monday, civil aviation minister Praful Patel spoke to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to brief him on the developments at Air India. While lockout as an option was ruled out at the highest level, the PM is believed to have backed stern action against the erring pilots and urged the airline to explore all legal options.

On the same day, late in the evening, the management’s stance changed and it gave a call to the pilots for negotiations and at the same time upheld the decision taken in the evening to suspend both the international and domestic flight bookings. On Tuesday, after consulting its legal department, the airline kept ready notices to be sent out to the pilots, seeking even cancellation of their licences. Even as Patel appealed to the pilots to resume duty by Tuesday midnight, the airline was ready with a plan in case the situation got worse.

Sensing the tough posturing, the protesting pilots, who numbered around 180, called off the strike by 10 am on Wednesday. The strike was unable to gather steam or muster over 300 executive pilots as was initially claimed by their representative Capt V K Bhalla. Worse, owing to internal differences, it could not get even the unionised pilots on its side.

Earlier in the day, cabinet secretary KM Chandrasekhar, accompanied by the civil aviation secretary M Nambiar, who had returned to the capital the previous night after holidaying in Kochi, and Jadhav met the Prime Minister at his residence at 12 noon, where the PM took stock of the situation.

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