Pilots Contracts Suspended, Air India’s Future in Limbo

Close to 200 retired pilots who had been appointed on contract basis by Air India have been told that with the carrier suspending operations in view of COVID-19, their services would not be required and that they would be in “No work, no pay mode”.

“Due to unfortunate and unprecedented circumstances, we regret to inform that with immediate effect, i.e. from 1.4.2020, your engagement after superannuation on post retirement contractual basis has been put under temporary suspension,” the letter from Deputy General Manager Pankaj Bhatnagar stated.

Over the last two years, with the government attempting to divest itself of its stake in Air India, the airline has been making news for all the troubles that it has been through. In December 2019, it was reported that in just one year, 65 pilots had put in their papers and that resignations of 25 pilots was accepted. Carrying on with operations had also become difficult due to staff shortage.

Earlier, pilots had asked to be allowed to quit without serving notice, as salaries and allowances had not been released on time for over three years. After finishing their training period, even maintenance engineers had  been quitting without serving their bond period.

The airline had to ground 20 of its 127 planes as it did not have the money to replace their engines; the number comprised 16% of its fleet and it was estimated that the airline needed about Rs 1,500 crore to replace the engines of these planes.

Undue government interference in managerial decisions is blamed for bringing Air India to its current sorry state. In 2004, aviation minister Praful Patel chaired a meeting that decided to inflate a purchase order from the original 28 aircraft to 68.

The cost would come to a massive Rs 50,000 crore and this was done without plans for expansion, routes or even viable revenue. A member of the Air India Board who questioned the decision was shunted out. A CAG report later found that the reason the ministry offered for augmenting fleet strength – competition on the US route – held no water; that the route had been incurring losses to the airline for three years.

In response to a query from RTI activist Commodore (retd) Lokesh Batra, the government admitted a few months ago that it owed Air India Rs 798 crore; about half of which was just for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s travels.

Air India operates flights to over 100 destinations but a list of destinations updated late last year showed that flights to over 40 destinations had been terminated.

The national carrier was pressed into service even recently, to bring back Indians stranded in China, Iran and Spain in light of the coronavirus pandemic. In 1990, when Iraqi president Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Air India conducted the largest air evacuation ever in history, an experience IFS officer K.P. Fabian recounted in an article for Madras Courier. Without a national carrier at its service, any such operation would be much harder for the government to plan in future; and much more expensive to execute.

The Centre had earlier announced that qualified bidders for Air India would be notified by March 31 this year. With the virus taking charge of international affairs in the interim, this was relegated to the background.

The combined debt of Air India and AI Express (which operates low cost flights to 30 destinations in India, South-east Asia and the Middle East) stood at about Rs 60,000 crore. Bidders were expected to take over Rs 23,000 crore of this figure.