Cut costs, reduce staff: Pilots to Air India

Air India pilots in a letter on Monday to the national carrier’s chairman and managing director Rajiv Bansal, on the financial health of the airline. The pilots have requested to resort to measures undertaken by private airlines, such as cutting costs and mandatory leave without pay, to cope with the current situation.

When HT contacted the airline, an Air India spokesperson said, “We would not like to comment on our internal matter.”

In the letter, the Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA), comprising Airbus (narrow body) pilots, and Indian Pilots’ Guild (IPG) comprising Boeing (wide body) pilots asked the airline to exempt class IV employees from the 10% cut on allowances as they are being affected more severely than other employees.

‘..The financial burden must be fairly distributed between all employees based on their job functions and emoluments..’ the letter read.

Air India currently has 1600 pilots. The pilots also asked Air India to follow private airlines in cutting costs and reducing staff from various departments at the backend that the pilots have termed as “non- relevant to the aviation business”. They pointed out that the airline has more than 1,600 staff members in its human resource and finance department for a fleet size of 125 aircraft.

“This is nowhere in-line with market standards and since operations have been scaled back, their work has reduced drastically. It is prudent for Air India and MoCA [Ministry of Civil Aviation] to take cognisance of this excess manpower to trim costs as our aircraft stand under- utilised,” the letter read.

They also suggested that since Air India is in financial distress, the employee strength should be brought at par with other market players through measures such as mandatory leave without pay till normal operations resume.

“We request you to innovate and spare no efforts to secure the survival and financial health of the airline,” concluded the pilots.

An Air India pilot said, “We are willing to take pay cuts as we want the management to deduct salaries according to the earnings of an employee (barring the class IV employees). The airline has majority of the employees in backend who not only dont report to office but are also not working. Moreover, at times when the airline is struggling to survive, there are departments that have outdoor expenses that run into crores, shouldn’t the airline cut down on such expenses in this phase? “

A senior pilot of the airline said, “ We have a total of 125 aircaft of which half of them are not flying, then why do we need full strength of ground staff, engineers, pilots and cabin crew? Why is the airline paying all of us? Like other private airlines, Air India can also send employees on leave without pay for few days over and above the 10% cut that should be according to respective salary slabs.”

Source: https://m.hindustantimes.com

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