A couple of years ago, Indian Airlines (IA) was at a lossit didnt know how to stop the manpower drain to private airlines. Every little movement of IA pilots, who quit in hordes to join the lucrative private airlines, made front page news. Innumerable internal memos stressed on strategies to control the influx.
Not any longer. Top IA executives are smiling: theres a long queue of pilots wanting to come back home. Even on salaries that are considerably less flattering than what they were offered when they left IA. "We have taken back about 14 pilots. And there are many more in line," chuckles a top executive. Some senior private airline pilots have hopped on to the Jet and Sahara airlines that are still going strong, but a majority of them are flocking to IA.
That raises its own problems. It disturbs the salary structure within the airlines. So the management has come up with a novel idea. Pilots wanting to return are taken on a contract with IA subsidiary Alliance Air. And since all of them are trained on the Boeing 737-200 series, it is not a problem. In addition, IA has trained its new set of pilots to gear up to the challenge by private airlines. Only, there is little challenge left.