New Delhi:
Air India's unwell pilots are apparently still not feeling better.
No truce has been called despite an emergency meeting between the 100 pilots on strike and their Managing Director. Arvind Jadhav, Chairman and Managing Director of the airline, flew to Delhi from Mumbai on Monday morning to meet the pilots.
The Management has offered this major concession: that special allowances due to pilots for July be paid immediately. These are the same allowances that were scrapped last week, causing 100 pilots who are not unionized to go on mass sick leave. The management has also offered to set up a committee to look into the pilots' complaints.
But while the negotiations continue, more than 15 flights were cancelled, most of them from Delhi. To minimize chaos, Air India is sending SMS-es on schedule changes. Passengers are also requested to call this toll-free number for more information: 18001801707.
On Wednesday, Air India decided to cut special allowances by upto 50 per cent for executive pilots, who claim they were not consulted about this. They say they won't start flying till the pay cuts are reversed.
But the Management is making some headway by having individual rounds of talks with pilots in different cities. Twenty pilots from Chennai have been persuaded to start flying again. Now, the management is trying to persuade pilots in Kolkata to follow suit.
Air India has been under huge pressure to cut its costs. The airline points out that in the last financial year, it declared losses of more than 5000 crores. Everyday, it owes 4.7 crores in interest alone. For the rest of this fiscal year, the airline wants to reduce expenditure by 1300 crores, roughly a third of this is meant to be targeted through restructuring its manpower costs.