KFA share tanks 5 per cent, hits lower circuit

Mumbai: Falling for third day in a row on Wednesday, shares of Kingfisher Airlines plunged about five per cent after the company declared a partial lock-out, suspending flight operations till Thursday. Soon after the opening trade, the scrip tanked 4.89 per cent to touch the lower circuit limit of Rs 14.60 on the BSE. At the NSE too, the stock fell by 4.89 per cent to Rs 14.60.

The airline had declared a partial lockout on Monday night, grounding all its flights, after its engineers and pilots struck work on Friday to protest non-payment of salaries since March.

Meanwhile, Kingfisher had yesterday said it would resume operations in a few days and the backlog of March salary would be given to its employees soon. Kingfisher has been saddled with a huge loss of Rs 8,000 crore and a debt burden of another over Rs 7,000 crore which it has not serviced since January.

In the broader market, the BSE benchmark Sensex was trading at 18,876.28, up 52.37 points at 1055 hours.