Kingfisher Airlines in a fresh instance of violation of regulations has opened ticket bookings on its website from October 13, even as sector regulator DGCA awaits the airline's response to a show-cause notice asking why its license should not be cancelled given its irregularities.

Even makemytrip.com, one of the largest travel portals in India has started selling Kingfisher tickets from the same date. The cash-strapped carrier, which has not paid salaries to its employees for the past seven months, grounded operations from October 1 in the wake of workers unrest and decided to take bookings from October 5, which was deferred to October 8 and then to October 12.

However, while the civil aviation minister Ajit Singh has made it clear that the airline cannot take off without convincing the government of a sustainable recovery plan, which should include payment of salary dues, the airline has all of a sudden opened bookings without intimation to aviation watchdog DGCA.

"A few more people have brought this to my notice. We will write to them to stop this," Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) head Arun Mishra told ET. While other big travel portals said they haven't got any cue from Kingfisher Airlines to start selling, neither do most of them want to sell the airlines tickets as they want to avoid problems like refunds in case of sudden cancellations, makemytrip.comsaid they have no control over this.

A day after one of Kingfisher Airlines employees' wife committed suicide citing financial stress as her husband was not paid for months; the DGCA shot a show-cause notice to the Vijay Mallya-owned airline asking it to explain why its license should not be cancelled.

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