Kingfisher Airlines has declared a partial lock-out with immediate effect and suspended till Thursday flight operations which came to a grinding halt following a strike by a section of its employees. In a statement, the private carrier said it has been forced to declare a partial lock-out following a series of incidents of violence, criminal intimidation, assault, wrongful restraint and other illegal acts including refraining from attending work, by a small section of its employees.

The operations got completely paralysed yesterday after pilots and some other staff joined the striking engineers protesting against non-payment of salaries for the last six months, sending the shares of the airline tumbling by 5 percent.