Jet Airways hikes salaries of pilots

Private carrier Jet Airways has hiked the salaries of its pilots, acceding to their long pending demand, even as its 24 per cent stake sale deal with Etihad Airways awaits regulatory approvals.

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"The airline has hiked its pilots' wages by up to 18 per cent in staggered manner with retrospective effect from 2010-11," sources close to the development said.

The maximum hike stands at 6 per cent per year based on the pay scales of the pilots. Jet Airways has about 13,000 employees on its roll, of which about 1,100 are pilots.

Earlier in January, the carrier had announced a wage hike of up to Rs 18,000 for its around 7,500 ground staff.

Jet had signed a wage revision with employees for three years - FY11-13 in 2010. However, it failed to honour the agreement citing recession.

The airline, which reported higher quarterly losses at Rs 495.53 crore in the January-March quarter of last fiscal, has signed a 24 per cent stake sale deal with Gulf carrier Etihad for Rs 2,058 crore.

Jet's proposal for the stake sale is expected to come up for approval before Foreign Investment Promotion Board on Tuesday.

But it has embroiled into a controversy with the department-related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture as well as Trinamool Congress MP Dinesh Trivedi and Janata Party President Subramaniam Swamy opposing it.

Incidentally, within weeks of the Naresh Goyal-promoted carrier writing to the Aviation Ministry to enhance the bilateral traffic rights between India and UAE, the government signed an MoU with Abu Dhabi, increasing the number of weekly seats capacity on the sector to 50,000 from the current level of 13,200 seats.