In the last few months, about 250 pilots have resigned from Jet Airways, bringing down its strength of pilots from 1,600 to 1,350. The cash-strapped airline hasn’t paid its employees salary for the past three months.
Jet has the largest and most effective fleet of 737 pilots, and reports suggest that the company has asked them to go on leave without pay as it is still waiting for an infusion of funds to restart the operation of over 80 aircraft out of 119.
The continuous exodus of skilled and experienced pilots will make it difficult to restart the operations in full force in near future as the low-cost carrier IndiGo has to ground many of its aircraft due to lack of pilots.
According to sources in the company, over 100 pilots have applied for jobs in the overseas companies in Qatar Airways, Emirates, Ethiopian Airlines, Singapore Airlines, etc.
“The problem is now with the lenders who can’t come to a consensus on how to move forward. They don’t understand the urgency required from an airline perspective,” SS Panesar, a retired pilot and air safety expert, told Outlook.
“Normally pilots don’t want to leave Jet as it is a very good employer compared to other Indian operators. However, unending uncertainty and non-payment of salary have forced them to look for means elsewhere,” a senior Jet pilot requesting anonymity told Outlook.
He said that pilots prefer overseas companies because in India “good operators don’t have vacancies and those which need pilots don’t offer a good working environment.”
Besides pilots, Jet employees across different job profiles have been leaving for the past few months and its strength has decreased by over 30% from 23,000 to 14,000 now.
“It’s unfortunate that Jet is not able to retain its pilots. This will seriously hamper its effort to restart operations of grounded aircraft,” Panesar says.
B737 series of aircraft need 11 pilots as they fly long distance. “The departure of 250 pilots means at least about 25 to 35 planes operation will suffer,” said another pilot.
Jet Airways currently has 26 planes in its fleet, down from its original strength of 119 a few months back. The distressed airline on April 2 said it had grounded 15 more aircraft after failing to pay its lessors.
The airline has been delaying the salaries of its pilots, engineers and senior staff since August.
On March 25, the Jet Airways board approved a resolution plan formulated by SBI-led domestic lenders, under which it agreed to infuse an emergency funding of â¹1,500 crore into the airline, and convert the same into equity worth 50.1% for a notional value of just Re 1 each share.
Jet begun operations in 1993 with a fleet of four planes.
However, the funds are yet to be disbursed due to "technical" reasons.
