Air India flight operations back to normal

National carrier Air India's flight operations was back to normal today after the airline's chief Ashwani Lohani "assured" the narrow-body pilots of addressing all their pending issues, including pay parity, by next month during a meeting with them here this evening.

In the last two days, Air India's domestic flight services were partially affected after a section of ICPA members decided not to report for duty in protest against pending issues related to salary and allowances, besides alleged denial of weekly-offs.

Following this, Lohani had yesterday warned of "exemplary disciplinary action" against employees "sabotaging" the progress of the national carrier. The airline management even sacked one contractual pilot for "not reporting" for duty and issued show-cause notice to five other pilots.

"The CMD during the meeting assured us of addressing all our pending issues including removing anomalies in the pay structure by next month and duly providing mandatory weekly offs in printed schedules. So we have also decided to fully cooperate with him," Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA) General Secretary T Praveen Keerthi told PTI after the meeting.