AI sacks 10 pilots over strike

OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT - From The Telegraph

New Delhi, May 8: Air India today sacked 10 agitating pilots, derecognised their union and sealed its offices after some 200 pilots failed to report for work, leading to the cancellation of 13 international flights.

Civil aviation minister Ajit Singh termed the pilots’ action “illegal” amid hints from government and airline sources that if the agitation continued, the Centre could rethink its Rs 42,000-crore bailout package for the carrier.

“They (the pilots) are reporting sick. They have not given any notice for any strike,” Ajit told reporters, while the airline sent doctors to these pilots’ homes.

The strike was called by the now derecognised Indian Pilots Guild (IPG), which represents about 250 pilots who belonged to the pre-merger Air-India. They are protesting the management’s decision to train their colleagues from the erstwhile Indian Airlines to fly the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

Flights from Delhi and Mumbai to Toronto, Chicago, Newark, Hong Kong and Singapore were cancelled as the day’s losses mounted to Rs 10 crore.

But domestic flights remained unaffected as the former Indian Airlines pilots, represented by the Indian Commercial Pilots Association, offered to work beyond stipulated hours.

An Air India release said it was trying to “operate some schedules with non-unionised” pilots and “accommodate disrupted flight passengers on flights of other airlines”.

A meeting of the pilots and airline officials with the central labour commissioner remained inconclusive and is to be followed by another tomorrow. Airline sources said the strike, coming at the start of the tourist season, might prompt a passenger exodus to rival carriers.

“When public money in thousands of crores is being earmarked for saving Air India, such a strike is completely uncalled for,” Ajit said.

“If we completely shut down Air India, it will have immediate repercussions,” he said, noting the airline accounted for nearly 17 per cent of the air traffic. But he added that the days of having a national carrier were gone and that the government should not run any service industry.

The strike by the pilots of Air India is highly irresponsible and the government has done the correct thing by sacking 10 members of the guild.

It is about time the government started taking tough administrative decisions instead of just giving and giving and giving like Mamta Banerjee.

This situation of Air India and earlier Indian Airlines would never have occurred if the government did not think it was their grand-dad's property to do as they wished.

We will soon have the 7th Pay Commission Report and then there will be another round or strikes by different wings of the government, competing with each other in squeezing what it can from the government, and bringing another round of inflation which the Reserve Bank of India is trying so desperately to control.

And the poor non government employees becoming all the poorer.