Air India strike: Forget routes, it's about pay scales

The Air India pilot strike has entered its seventh day today, with no signs of a consensus between the management and the pilots. There are many reasons that have led to this strike, which has not only cost the national carrier crores, but has also led to embarrassment for the government. And of the biggest reasons for this embarrassment is the Air India-Indian Airlines merger in 2007 by by the then civil aviation minister Praful Patel, said civil aviation minister Ajit Singh in an interview with Karan Thapar in Devil’s Advocate on CNN-IBN.

Stopping short of terming it a mistake, Ajit Singh told Thapar that in retrospect the merger has not worked out as they have different pay scales, areas of operations and a different culture.

“We are now looking at retrospect, at that point in time they thought there may be lot of synergies, they thought they will save money in buying fuels, they will have the same marketing force,” said Ajit Singh, making clear the UPA Government’s intention at that time to initiate the merger. Singh agreed that before the merger, the two independent entities were a profitable venture but after the merger, Air India’s losses have only piled up.

“People at that time might have thought and of course it’s true that up to 2005 both these companies were making profits. Now this years and last year, the losses would be around Rs 9,000 crore,” he said.

When Thapar pointed that even though the merger was initiated in 2007, no real effort has been made to implement it, Singh in his defence said that , “70 percent what should have happened in merger has taken place, but key areas like pilots, cabin crew and human resources are yet to be merged.

However, Singh kept dodging the issue of privatizing the airline and noted that Air India and Indian Airlines were profitable before the merger because the two had a monopoly share in the market, unlike the current situation.