Docs call AI pilots' bluff: not at home, or not sick

New Delhi: Air India’s pilots who reported sick to press their demands from last week have been doing the disappearing act. According to a medical summary given to the airline management, Firstpost learns that some 48 or the 53 Delhi-based pilots who reported sick were not found at home.

Pilots affiliated to the derecognised Indian Pilots’ Guild (IPG) have been reporting sick since Monday last, protesting the airline’s plan to allow pilots of the erstwhile Indian Airlines to train on the Boeing 787 Dreamliners. These aircraft begin arriving in June.

While the bulk of the local pilots were not found at home, the medical report summary said that nine of the 18 outstation pilots, who were staying at Hotel Hyatt, had complained of bad stomach and backache but doctors found them medically fit.

So where does Air India go from here? It is well known that pilots are faced with twin threats - if they call in sick for 14 days in a row, they must appear before the full medical board of the Air Force, which could put them out of flying for months; some are already faced with the prospect of their licences being cancelled by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). But the management is also left with very little choice other than rescheduling operations.

PTI

With no signs of the striking pilots returning to work, the Air India management has put in place a new contingency schedule for international operations till Friday. This, even as it is thinking of getting some aircraft on wet lease to help matters. Wet lease means aircraft would come with pilots and cabin crew.

As per the new schedule, the Delhi-New York flight will now go via Paris while the Mumbai-New York one stands cancelled till Friday. Instead of two flights, just one flight to London will be operational from Delhi, none from Mumbai. Also the daily flights to Toronto, Osaka, Shanghai and Hong Kong have been cancelled. In all, 19 international flights have been cancelled till Friday and several have been rescheduled with multiple touchdowns.

Since the prime factor behind the pilots’ strike is HR-related, and especially after Aviation Minister Ajit Singh talked of the merger as a flawed, some experts have raised the issue of demerger of Air India and Indian Airlines. But is that an option?

Senior civil aviation ministry officials say it is practically impossible to now separate the operations of the erstwhile public sector airlines because at least 70 percent of the merger has been accomplished and the remaining - integration of the two airlines’ human resources - will be done after the Dharmadhikari Committee recommendations on harmonising pay scales are implemented.

But it is interesting to note that several warnings had been issued in the past on how the merger should be handled with care. CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury, who chaired the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Civil Aviation, said on Tuesday that his committee had twice pointed out serious problems with the merger of Indian Airlines and Air India. This was also pointed out by the Committee on Public Undertakings.

Yechury’s committee had also said that the two airlines should continue to function separately but under a single holding company.“But the government did not accept our recommendations and today the problems, which we had warned of three-four years ago, are occurring.”

Two years back, some officials in the ministry of civil aviation had mooted a proposal to allow the two carriers to operate as separate entities without really undoing the merger. But this was eventually shot down.Yechury’s panel had also recommended that the National Aviation Company of India Ltd (NACIL), which was then running the merged Air India, should be converted into a holding company with NACIL-A and NACIL-I as “separate functional units”.