Jet Airways pilots body to hold annual meeting on Tuesday amid non-payment of salaries to employees

Mumbai: Jet Airways’ domestic pilots body National Aviator’s Guild (NAG) is set to hold its annual general meeting in the city on Tuesday, a source said on Monday. The meeting assumes significance as it comes in the backdrop of drastically reduced operations and non-payment of salaries to pilots along with engineers and other senior staff for more than three months now. The guild, which came into being almost a decade ago, represents around 1,000 domestic pilots at the airline. [caption id=“attachment_3886561” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters.[/caption] “We are holding our annual general meeting in Mumbai tomorrow. During the meeting, besides discussing our general issues, we will also be deliberating on the present scenario (non-payment of salaries),” the source told PTI. The pilots with other group of people have not received salary payments almost since December. Having failed to get any assurance from the management on payment of overdue salaries, the pilots body last week wrote to Union labour minister Santosh Gangwar, seeking his intervention in recovering their dues along with the accumulated interest. The Naresh Goyal-promoted Jet Airways, which is partially owned by UAE flag carrier Etihad, is in financial distress for almost a year now with four consecutive quarters of losses. The severe liquidity crunch has forced it to ground aircraft, cancelling flights in huge numbers, shut down stations and delay salary payments to a group of staff. The airline has, so far, grounded 41 of its planes only on account of non-payment of lease rentals. These don’t include other planes which have been taken out of operations owning to non-availability of funds for maintenance. The airline has, however, till date not shared the number of flights it has been cancelling for over a month now and neither the aviation regulator DGCA has shown any transparency on the issue.