Air travelers may face problems, airline companies are facing trouble due to this

Indian airline Companies are hoping to return to ‘acche din’ after the pandemic, but they seem to be facing a crisis again. With flights returning to normalcy, he is currently facing another issue, which he did not pay attention to during the last two years. This is the issue of low wages of the employees. A large section of IndiGo and GoFirst aircraft maintenance technicians have been on leave due to ‘sickness’ during the past one week to protest the low wages. In such a situation, the problems of air travelers may increase in the coming days. There may be an increase in the possibility of delay or cancellation of domestic flights.

Many companies started new recruitments

However, despite the shortage of staff, barring a few incidents, both the airlines have been able to keep their flights running smoothly. Another major reason for the staff crunch in these airlines is the recruitment drive by Akash Air, the reorganized Jet Airways and Tata-owned Air India. On July 2, about 55 per cent of IndiGo’s domestic flights were delayed as a large number of its crew had gone on leave. Sources said that these employees had allegedly gone to participate in the recruitment activities going on in Air India. On July 13, some SpiceJet pilots reported that the airline’s captain and ‘first officer’ were going on sick leave to protest their low pay. However, the airline said that all the pilots had come to work that day.

Salary cut was done during Corona

Indian airline companies cut their employees’ salaries during the peak of the pandemic. Most are still paying low wages to their employees and have not started paying them ‘full’ wages. A senior executive of an affordable airline company said that employees are aware that the workload on them at this time is similar to the time before the pandemic, but they are being paid less. At the same time, their condition is worse due to inflation. He said this caused dissatisfaction among the employees. There is a lot of resentment especially among the technicians working in the lower positions etc. Two technical workers who took part in the protest said that the newcomers in the low-cost airline are being paid only Rs 8,000 to 15,000 salary, which is very low. Although the issue of low wages is still rising, the protests show that this has been the case in the aviation industry for a long time. There were two occasions in September and November last year when SpiceJet employees went on strike at the Delhi airport to protest low wages. Most of these employees were related to the security department and aircraft maintenance.

Companies did not pay attention to skilled labor force

In a December 2020 report by aviation consultancy company CAPA India, it was said that human resource management in the Indian aviation sector is the latter’s focus and this is the situation since 2003-04. The report said that hundreds of aircraft are procured and inducted, but do not take into account the need for skilled manpower to operate them. Rakesh Jhunjhunwala-backed Akash Air has ordered 72 MAX aircraft. It is preparing to start operations from this month. Similarly, Jet Airways and Air India are also in talks to buy aircraft from Boeing and Airbus.