NEW DELHI: Over 98% of Vistara‘s 1,000-odd pilots have signed a new pay agreement, CEO Vinod Kannan said Saturday even as discontent simmered over reduced remuneration and disruptions plagued the Tatas-owned airline ahead of its merger with Air India (AI) by the year-end.
“We are aware that some pilots have some concerns and queries regarding the contract.We are engaging with them to clarify and resolve the same. However, this has not caused any visible spike in attrition among the pilots,” Kannan said.
The CEO acknowledged recent disruptions from merger-related issues and apologised. “While we do have adequate crew for normal operations, we have been operating on a high utilisation. We were challenged due to operational disruption. We are addressing this on a war footing… continuing to hire more pilots carefully and scaling back operations slightly to provide much-needed resilience and a buffer in the rosters,” Kannan said.
The Tata Group is in the process of merging its low-cost carriers (LCC) – AIX Connect (erstwhile AirAsia India) into Air India Express, and full-service Vistara into Air India. The LCC merger is going on smoothly, essentially because employees of “shrinking” AIX Connect realised it was the only option to survive.
Vistara, on the other hand, had been doing well and its merger has led to discontent among its employees, especially pilots, due to which the airline saw massive flight disruptions earlier this week.
Kannan promised a steady run soon. “We have deployed larger aircraft like our Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner and Airbus A321neo aircraft on select domestic routes to accommodate more customers, wherever possible…. The situation has already started looking up with our on-time performance improving for the last three days. We hope to stabilise our operations for the rest of April by this weekend,” the CEO said.
One of the pilots’ pay pangs centres on flying allowance. They currently get 70 hours of such allowance every month. Under the new contract for AI — for ensuring parity with the pilots there — it will fall to 40 hours. The allowance cut, along with faulty rostering — which the Vistara management has acknowledged — and poor work-life balance, have fuelled discontent among pilots, not just in Vistara but in other group airlines, too.
“We are aware that some pilots have some concerns and queries regarding the contract.We are engaging with them to clarify and resolve the same. However, this has not caused any visible spike in attrition among the pilots,” Kannan said.
The CEO acknowledged recent disruptions from merger-related issues and apologised. “While we do have adequate crew for normal operations, we have been operating on a high utilisation. We were challenged due to operational disruption. We are addressing this on a war footing… continuing to hire more pilots carefully and scaling back operations slightly to provide much-needed resilience and a buffer in the rosters,” Kannan said.
The Tata Group is in the process of merging its low-cost carriers (LCC) – AIX Connect (erstwhile AirAsia India) into Air India Express, and full-service Vistara into Air India. The LCC merger is going on smoothly, essentially because employees of “shrinking” AIX Connect realised it was the only option to survive.
Vistara, on the other hand, had been doing well and its merger has led to discontent among its employees, especially pilots, due to which the airline saw massive flight disruptions earlier this week.
Kannan promised a steady run soon. “We have deployed larger aircraft like our Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner and Airbus A321neo aircraft on select domestic routes to accommodate more customers, wherever possible…. The situation has already started looking up with our on-time performance improving for the last three days. We hope to stabilise our operations for the rest of April by this weekend,” the CEO said.
One of the pilots’ pay pangs centres on flying allowance. They currently get 70 hours of such allowance every month. Under the new contract for AI — for ensuring parity with the pilots there — it will fall to 40 hours. The allowance cut, along with faulty rostering — which the Vistara management has acknowledged — and poor work-life balance, have fuelled discontent among pilots, not just in Vistara but in other group airlines, too.