AirAsia India is imposing an average pay cut of 40 per cent on its pilots for the months of May and June. The cut for the other employees and senior management will be the same as in April.
According to PTI, earlier, pilots were paid for 70 hours, irrespective of whether they flew or not. This duration has been reduced to 20 hours now. As a result, a junior pilot, will, on an average, earn about Rs 40,000 a month as compared to about Rs 1.40 lakh earlier. Similarly, senior pilots, on an average will now receive only Rs 1 lakh as compared to the Rs 3.45 lakh they were earning earlier.
In April, the senior managers had taken a 20 per cent pay cut whereas the executives in other categories had taken a 7 to 17 per cent pay cut. Those earning Rs 50K or less per month were excluded.
The joint venture between the Tata Group and AirAsia may also plan to shrink the workforce in order to sustain the business. Right now, it has a 2500-strong workforce, of which about 600 are pilots manning its 30 Airbus A320 aircraft. Of these, only half the planes, that is, about 15 are being used right now. All plans to add new planes to the fleet have been set aside for the time being, considering that the aviation sector may take about two years to recover or attain some semblance of normalcy.
