Rather than discussing shutting down the airline and the Indian aviation industry in general, why don’t we stick to the "actual" problem?
SARS exists, so much so that some airlines have stopped ALL flights to Singapore and started giving facemasks to crews on most other Asian routes. Air India continued to operate the route.
The Indian Pilot Guild (IPG) decided to protect their members and stopped them from flying to Singapore. Non-union management pilots then operated these flights.
Stage 2 for the IPG came in to effect last Wednesday, they advised all CAPTAINS to check to see if any of their crew/cabin crew had operated services to SARS areas in the past 10 days, if so, they were to offload the crewmember and bring in a standby.
I happen to know the first guy who was faced with this instruction. He showed up for his flight and was confronted by airline management and union management; he had already lost his first option by "Not going sick"... so he was left with two other options:
1: Fly the flight and suffer the wrath of the union.
2: Not fly the flight and suffer the wrath of the airline management.
I know which option he took, but put yourself in the same situation and which option would you take????
Mutt.