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Strike seems to go beyond just the
pilots' obduracy
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When 310 of Air India’s 450 pilots
went on strike, they had little idea many of them would be pleading for their
jobs to be given back forty days later. Yet, this is the latest imbroglio that
the national carrier finds itself in. The Indian Pilots Guild (IPG), which
represents Air India’s pilots, was completely blindsided by an unbending, newly
appointed civil aviation minister, Ajit Singh. It had no idea that Singh would
simply pick up the gauntlet thrown to him and turn the tables on the hapless
pilots.
Singh not only terminated the
services of 101 of the striking pilots, but also de-recognised the union. This
means its representatives will not be called for negotiations by the
management. The minister insisted the agitation be called off first, only then would
taking the pilots back be considered and, that too on a case-by-case basis. In
the meantime, the airline prepared a contingency plan to operate 75 per cent of
its international flights.
Some industry experts view this
Bismarckian stance in a positive light. “This is a welcome approach, since the
authority of the Air India management has to be firmly established. Its
dilution may lead to more agitations, as we have repeatedly seen in the past”,
says Amber Dubey, partner and head (aviation) at KPMG, a global consultancy
firm.
However, the strike seems to go
beyond just the pilots’ obduracy. More than anything else, it is a classic
scenario of the complications that may arise due to a failure in
troubleshooting a merger of two entities.
Here is what lies at the heart of
the Air India problem: Even as it had merged with Indian Airlines in 2005, the
pilots of the two airlines stuck to flying the aircraft attached to their
respective airlines — wide-bodied ones used for international legs in the case
of Air India, and the more short-haul, narrow-bodied ones in the case of Indian
Airlines. What threw the existing state of affairs into a loop was the entry of
the much-hyped ‘Dreamliners’—wide-bodied Boeing 787s that promised to help turn
things around for Air India.
The match that lit the tinder hot
was a proposal to get an equal number of Indian Airlines pilots and Air India
ones to fly the twenty-seven planes that Air India would take delivery of in
the next few years. Yet, not all pilots are made equal, apparently. In Indian
Airlines, it took six years to automatically become a commander. In Air India,
it took ten, but only if there was a vacancy available. Someone in Air India
who was waiting in the wings for, say, fifteen years to become commander would
probably be enraged to see a six-years-in-service, narrow-body aircraft pilot,
substantially junior to him, occupy his turf and deny him his long-awaited
promotion.
With eight pairs of pilots required
for each Dreamliner, as many as 432 pilots would have had to be trained once
all the 27 planes were delivered. This would have brought most of the erstwhile
Air India pilots their long-awaited promotions. In fact, Air India had hired
pilots to handle the increase in the international fleet size, from 23 to
around 50 after the induction of the new planes.
Industry observers say that the
whole problem lies in the very genesis of the union of the two entities.
“Airlines like Air France-KLM let the pilots function as separate units under
one airline. The fact is that Air India’s merger was badly planned and
operating it as two separate units under one airline would have solved many of
the problems,” an industry insider, who does not want to be identified, says.
If the airline wanted to bring the
pilots together under one entity, it could have asked them to choose from among
several options that strived for parity. “When British Airways was formed after
the merger of four airlines, the pilots flying narrow-body planes and eligible
to be promoted as commanders were given an option to either become commanders
on narrow bodies, or to become co-pilots on wide-body planes and then get
promoted as commanders,” he says, adding that such a solution would have
resolved all conflicts.
Apparently, IPG pilots say that this
issue — of competing pilots and aircraft type — was to be resolved by the
Justice Dharmadhikari committee. But Air India pushed through a policy in
October 2011 under which equal number of pilots of the formerly separate
airlines would train for the Dreamliner. IPG objected, went to court, and lost.
For Air India, this impasse can turn
out a sizeable blow, that too when the airline is witnessing a large increase
in revenues and an improvement in operations. A substantial part of the
airline’s sales — Rs 15 crore of the daily revenues of Rs 22 crore — comes from
international operations. This has been hit.
Ultimately, the one taking the
biggest blow is the taxpayer. Therefore, it is now the government’s urgent
responsibility to end the impasse, restore confidence in the airline and its
staff and allow it to continue with its recovery before it manages to sink it,
once again.
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