NEW DELHI: Despite simmering discontent among Vistara pilots over reduced pay as their airline readies for a merger into Air India by the year end, over 98% of the 1,000-odd pilots have signed the new agreement for the same.
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The Tata Group is in the process of merging its low-cost carriers — AIX Connect (erstwhile AirAsia India) into Air India Express. And the full service Vistara into Air India.
While the LCC merger is going smoothly essentially because employees of “shrinking” AIX Connect realised the merger was the only option for their airline to survive. Vistara, on the other hand, had been doing well and its merger has led to discontent and disheartenment among its employees, especially pilots, due to which the airline saw massive flight disruptions earlier this week.
While acknowledging the flight disruptions and apologising for the same, Vistara CEO Vinod Kannan said Saturday: “…While we do have an adequate crew for normal operations, since we have been operating on a high utilisation, we were challenged due to operational disruption…. addressing this on a war footing… continuing to hire more pilots and are also carefully scaling back our operations slightly to provide the much-needed resilience, and a buffer in the rosters.”
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“We have also 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 improved with our on-time performance improving for the last three days. We hope to stabilise our operations for the rest of April 2024 by this weekend,” he said.
Regarding the new contracts pilots have to sign as Vistara prepares for merger into AI, he said: “… over 98% of pilots have signed the new contract. Having said that, 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 amongst pilots.”
Vistara pilots used to get a minimum of 70 hours of flying allowance every month. Under the new contract for AI (to ensure parity with pilots there), the minimum will fall to 40 hours. This, along with faulty rostering that Vistara management has accepted and poor work-life balance, have led to discontent among pilots not just in Vistara but in other group airlines too.
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For the last one year or so, Tata Group airlines pilots have been sent to different airlines. For instance, Vistara sent its Boeing 737s to AI Express with pilots and some of its senior B787 and A320 pilots to AI. AI, in turn, sent some A320 pilots to Vistara. “This has been going on for a year,” say sources.
