Air India salary is a puzzle: CMD poorer than clerks

The curious case of cash-strapped Air India just got a little more skewed.

While the airline’s pilots are paid on par with market levels of around Rs 2 to 4 lakh a month, the national carrier’s chairman and managing director take-home pay packages are often less than even its clerical staff, an Economic Times report pointed out today .

At Rs 1.30 lakh a month, the CMD’s take home salary of around Rs 80,000 is equivalent to the salary of 500 clerical staff who draw anything between Rs 60,000 to Rs 1.30 lakh. However, given the fact that the CMD and MD are bureaucrats, rather than professionals from the industry, they receive the salary meant for civil servants and not CEOs.

Usually, even after 30 years of service, an officer of the rank of secretary to the government of India would not draw more than Rs 56,000 as monthly salary.

[caption id=“attachment_587276” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Given that the CMD and MD are bureaucrats, rather than professionals from the industry, they receive the salary meant for civil servants and not CEOs.[/caption]

An earlier Business Line article pointed out that at the senior level, such as GM or ED, the ratio between salaries of a PSU executive and his private counterpart could be about 1:4. But, at the board level, the difference could be as high as 1:15, without considering incentives like employee stock options.

“Air India is just a posting for them like many other postings, so they also don’t have the option to be absorbed as PSU officials,” the ET report quoted a former Air India employee as saying.