Air India Pilots End Strike NEW DELHI - A group of Air India pilots who had demanded exclusive rights to fly Boeing 787 Dreamliners has called off a 58-day strike, bowing to pressure from the government and a court order. About 500 pilots at the ailing national carrier ended their strike late Tuesday. They fly international routes and have been demanding that colleagues from the former Indian Airlines, which has merged with Air India, not be trained to fly Dreamliners, because they worried that their career prospects could suffer. Air India is expected to receive the first of its 27 Dreamliners soon, although the government has been wrangling with Boeing over compensation for delayed deliveries. The Air India strike added to the chaos in an industry where the former No. 2 carrier by domestic market share, Kingfisher Airlines, has cut its operating fleet to 18 from 64 and has not paid employees since January. The strike also forced Air India to cut back on its international schedule and to combine flights, which further strengthened the hold on international routes by the Indian market leader, Jet Airways. Some of the pilots were expected to return to work as soon as Wednesday, and Air India will look at reinstating the striking pilots, the airline said. The airline has fired more than 100 striking pilots and said previously that it would consider rehiring those pilots on a case-by-case basis, once they unconditionally reported to work. Tauseef Mukadam, the joint secretary of the Indian Pilots Guild, the striking pilots" union, did not respond to calls for comment. K. Swaminathan, an Air India spokesman, declined to comment. The Indian aviation minister, Ajit Singh, has called the strike illegal and said the government would not talk with the pilots until they reported to work. On Tuesday, the Delhi High Court, which had previously called the strike illegal, ordered the pilots to return to work immediately and asked Air India's management to look into their demands. Indian carriers are reeling under a combined debt load of $20 billion and annual losses of $2 billion, with a weak rupee adding to their already hefty fuel costs. All but one of India's six big airlines lose money, with the privately held IndiGo the sole profitable airline. Air India, still flying thanks to a much-criticized $5.8 billion government bailout, accounts for most of those losses, according to the Center for Asia Pacific Aviation. The debt-laden carrier risked losing its bailout money if the strike continued because the package was linked to certain performance-based milestones. Critics of government support for Air India argue that the aid enables it to charge below-cost fares, forcing competitors to do the same, and subsidizes a work force that at 218 people per plane is nearly double that of Jet Airways" 116. Air India and Indian Airlines were combined in 2007 in a merger beset with integration problems, most related to human resource issues. The combined carrier under the Air India brand has never made a profit. The purchase of Dreamliners was criticized by a government auditor last year for "imposing an undue long-term financial burden."