Jet Airways pilots irked by salary delays, deferred talks with management

While pilots continue to report to work, many of them have declined to do additional duties.

"Earlier, pilots would do overtime, and come to duty even on off days. Not anymore. What is the incentive when everything is only on pay slips and you don't get it?" an executive told Moneycontrol.

Each airline has its own guidelines on how many hours a pilot should fly a month and it may vary from 70 hours to 80 hours. If a pilot flies more than that, it is considered overtime.

Sources added the flight cancellation on November 18 - when 10 flights did not take off from Mumbai - was due to a rostering issue that arose because of pilots declining additional duties.

Jet Airways has about 2,000 pilots.

Industry observers said if the liquidity crunch is not checked, then there could be a repeat of the 2009 situation. Then, about 130 flights were cancelled on a single day after pilots failed to report to work. Jet Airways then said the pilots had resorted to a "simulated strike."

Airline response

As of now, Jet Airways has refuted it is facing non-cooperation from pilots.

In a written response, a company spokesperson said:

"Jet Airways would like to submit that your above observations are erroneous and completely conjectural. On the contrary, and as communicated on numerous earlier occasions, the company continues to enjoy the complete support and cooperation of all its employees, including pilots and engineers, through their respective representative bodies, who have extended their solidarity and full support to the airline. The airline would like to reiterate that the reason for the above-mentioned cancellations of November 18 was a systemic error, and not pilot non-cooperation, as is being unduly speculated."

The spokesperson added: "The company continues to have adequate pilots and run scheduled operations, with rising on-time performance, reflecting growing operational reliability. "

Town hall

Jet Airways pilots have a town hall meet every quarter.

The last one was held in October, each in Mumbai and Delhi. And non-payment of salary was the focal point of discussion.

While one section of pilots pushed for stringent action, like declining work as a form of protest, others favoured to wait a little more before a drastic step was taken.

Sources told Moneycontrol many pilots have started looking out and have even got offers from other airlines. "But many are waiting it out. Most want to see how the talks with the Tata group pan out," said an executive.

There were reports earlier that about 50 pilots at Jet have put in their papers in the last two months. While sources reconfirmed the number, they added: "But it may be unfair to blame all the resignations at the financial crunch faced by the company. Many of these pilots had put in papers even before the crisis began," said an executive.

The company spokesperson said Jet Airways is "progressively addressing compensation matters."

"Jet Airways has a transparent and open culture and employees as well as the management regularly engage through various forums to discuss and resolve matters of mutual concern via internal, defined, consultative processes. The management is in regular dialogue with the pilots and other teams to discuss and resolve on-going issues including disbursement of salaries. As stated earlier, Jet Airways is committed to meet its obligations and has been progressively addressing compensation matters for the 15% affected employees, while payments to all others continue to be made as per schedule," said the spokesperson.