The Delhi-Hong Kong-Osaka-Hong Kong-Delhi flight that was supposed to depart on Friday night had to be cancelled due to unavailability of cockpit crew to operate it. The flight finally took off on Saturday night and that too for operating only on Delhi-Hong Kong-Delhi route without going to Japan.
Earlier this week, two Boeing 787s suffered snags in Paris on successive nights due to which they had to be grounded there for a day each. "A night departure from the west need an aircraft that is completely snag free. Because if there is a snag and rectifying that takes time, night curfew for flights kicks in those places and then we can't take off," said a source.
While Boeing is trying to address the issue of Dreamliner snags, resignation of pilots trained to fly these planes in AI is now acquiring serious dimensions. On June 19, 2015, a large number of Dreamliner pilots from erstwhile Indian Airlines had sought no objection certificate from the airline to quit over the management's continued failure to have pay parity between them and their counterparts of erstwhile and Air India even eight years after the two airlines were merged. Sources say there are about 70 pilots from IA side on the Dreamliner and most of them are in the same state of mind.
An IA commander on the Dreamliner gets about Rs 3.5 lakh a month while his or her AI counterpart gets Rs 6.5 lakh for doing exactly the same job, thanks to the failure to have pay parity in the merged airline. "We perform the same duties as our counterparts in AI.... Even AI first officers (co-pilots) earn more than us, which is extremely humiliating and demeaning," the letter written on June 19 to the airline management said.
AI new CMD Ashwani Lohani, in a letter to employees on Friday, assured to redress genuine grievances while seeking their full cooperation. Lohani is learnt to have made pay parity one of his priorities in the merged AI.
Story and comments: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com
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