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Top executives told to forgo July salary
Miloni Bhatt, Friday June 19, 2009, Mumbai

Air India's Chairman has written to senior executives to:

  • Forego salaries and productivity linked incentives for July 2009
  • Air India says this is to ease the liquidity crunch
  • Around 150 executives have been asked to forego salaries for July
  • The Air India CMD says every paisa needs to be saved

More trouble for the national carrier the CMD of Air India has asked its senior management to forego the salary and perks payable in the month of July.

A clear message to both protesting unions and the government that Air India's troubles are steadily increasingly.

The Maharaja's a pauper! Well almost and here's the proof.

First Air India told its 32,000 employees that June's salary will be paid only by mid-July.

Now it's asking all senior staff to forego salaries and perks payable in July!

In a letter from the company's Chief Managing Director to all senior staff he says: "Every single paisa needs to be saved."

The target audience of the advice carefully selected:

  • 20% of Air India's employees take away 60% of the salary bill

Air India sources say it will impact 150 people and will save the company about 2 crore. Industry experts say Air India's condition mirrors that of other international carriers.

"It's not just Air India. The aviation industry across the world is doing this. In fact, British Airways CEO has his employees to forego a month's salary recently," said V Thulasidas, Former CMD, Air India.

This latest move by the airline seems to be a message to those employees who threatened action after the company decided to defer June's salaries for all its 30,000 odd employees by 15 days.

But it also strengthens Air India's case for a bailout.

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Tags: Air India, aviation sector
Comments
Posted by Ajay Sinha on Jun 19, 2009
"Joh dikhta hai, woh bikta hai" This famous saying in hindi undoubtedly fits the bill especially in hospitality industry. Even if top executives agree to give up their one month salary, it won't make a difference. Its not going to nullify the loss of around 11 crores a month which AI is suffering. The management need to do some introspection and then come up with some concrete solutions which could be nothing else, but to bring up their hospitality standards at par with other international carriers. A passenger who is paying for the service will obviously look for a better option available to him. Unfortunately AI is having an array of drawbacks. Apparently, a few points to highlight: 1)Elderly and not so friendly cabin crew : With all respect to the elderly cabin crew, its high time for the AI management to understand there has to be an age limit for the cabin crews. AI is not a national bank or post office or a gov school where elderly staff can anyhow manage. They need to be energetic and charismatic enough to serve the international passengers and to make them opt for AI next time they are flying. AI crew is very well known for their impatient and unfriendly behavior and I wonder how they will behave in case of an emergency. However as gov. policies cant change overnight, the elderly staff can be alternatively deputed on ground duties. 2)Air India website is a perfect example of the saying "diye ke tale andhera" in terms of aesthetics/navigation. The biggest & National carrier of India, a country which boasts to be home to the sharpest minds in IT industry, for sure deserves a better website. Browsing through its web portal is a complete pain in neck. At occasions, it shows error message like "you can not book ticket more then 4 days in advance" and sometimes the selected option can not proceed further without any reason. One will rather prefer to pay a few thousand bucks more to book other airline's ticket on internet than to keep struggling over Air India's website. Compare its website with S'pore Airlines / Emirates or even our private carriers like Jet/Kingfisher or rather minnows like Spicejet and see the difference. Why does not the management understands that this is not a small issue that can be overlooked. While visiting the website itself, one can envisage what would be the condition of the Airline. 3)Flights having in-flight entertainment (with below standard screen quality) probably features randomly chosen documentaries/movies from the plethora of the most anonymous ones. The ear phones they provide on board can be had for Rs.50/Kg from Nehru place. The news papers kept in the pocket are badly crushed and only if you are lucky you will get the complete one. If govt endeavors to raise the standards of AI and bring it in proximity to the services offered by its counterparts like SIA/Emirates/BA/Lufthansa, i m sure at least most of the Indians will prefer flying with AI as its the national airline. To conclude: being a citizen of India, I request Hon. Govt to take necessary steps to save the "MAHARAJA" before it becomes saga of yesteryear.
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