IndiGo’s comments have been sought and are awaited.
“Some technicians did not report for night shift in Hyderabad on July 8. The airline is closely monitoring the situation in Hyderabad and Delhi. It says that adequate measures have been taken and so far there has been no delay or disruption in the flight schedule due to technician trouble,” say sources.
The airline is in the midst of a major management change with key top executives including the CEO Ronojoy Dutta and chief commercial officer Willie Boulter when they go out. KLM Royal Dutch Airlines President and CEO Peter Albers Will take over as the next CEO to oversee IndiGo’s expansion internationally. This transition period is proving difficult for India’s largest airline in terms of passenger carriage.
In the past few months, there has been growing crew discontent among IndiGo – India’s only profitable airline before the pandemic – over pandemic-time pay cuts. It started with pilots planning mass leave and IndiGo suspending some of them this April for violating “conditions of employment and the company’s code of conduct”.
Then on July 2, a large number of people went to the walk-in interview conducted by IndiGo’s cabin crew. Tata GroupAir India said that 55% of its flights that day were delayed and some had to be cancelled. While IndiGo called it a “one-time” issue to the DGCA, which had sent a response to the same, the regulator has directed the airline to compensate passengers of delayed flights as per rules (where the delay is long enough to trigger penalty payment). Was) .
Earlier this week, IndiGo rolled back the pandemic-time pay cut to address discontent among its pilots, as both new (like Akasa) and old (like Air India) players were part of the trained crew. Members are on a hiring spree. It withdrew another 8% of Covid-time pay cuts and reverted to a rostering system, whereby pilots would earn more, but have fewer leaves. IndiGo took a pay cut of about 28% at the peak of COVID and now after two partial roll backs, the current salary is now about 16% lower than the pre-2020 level. It has also reinstated some allowances for pilots.
A mail written by IndiGo AMT to the airline management protesting the difference in pay between them and Aircraft Maintenance Engineers (AMEs). AMTs are “highly qualified technical personnel who, after completing a specialized AME course, have allowed them to work on aircraft maintenance … Most AMTs are paid between Rs 20,000 to Rs 30,000 … to trainee AMTs The contract is done for 12 months, as adjusted by Rs.8,000 (per month). Cheap labourers…. Request you to intervene and resolve (this) issue.”