AI EXPRESS SACKS 30 CABIN CREW MEMBERS WHO REPORTED SICK

NEW DELHI: Air India Express has sacked 30 cabin crew members who were among the about 300 staff that reported sick en masse starting Tuesday evening, leading to a massive disruption of the airline’s schedule. The Tata Group budget carrier has cut its 350-400 daily flights by about 11% till May 13.

“…an overwhelming number of other cabin crew members have also reported sick and not reported for their duties. This clearly points to a pre-meditated and concerted abstention from work without any justifiable reason. As a result, a large number of flights had to be cancelled thereby disrupting the entire schedule, which caused tremendous inconvenience to esteemed passengers. Your act is not only subversive of public interest, but has also caused embarrassment, severe reputational damage, and serious monetary loss to the Company. Your act of reporting sick for work amounts to a concerted action with a common understanding, to not operate the flight and to disrupt services of the company,” the termination letters issued say.

AI Express cabin crew are up in arms over HR issues caused, among others, by the impending merger of erstwhile AirAsia India into it. The AI Express Employees Union, which the airline management says is not a recognised union, had written to Tata Group chairman N Chandrasekaran on April 26, 2024, about “growing unrest and dissatisfaction”. “..Shortly after acquisition (by Tata), several employees with impeccable records were terminated… Employees find themselves silenced while attempting to address grievances… they are muted on townhall meetings… there is a glaring lack of equality in treatment of of employees… AI Express employees interviewed for higher ranks are offered lower job after clearing interviews…. essential allowances such as HRA, TA, DA, and DH, which were part of the employees compensation prior to the merger, have been entirely removed, resulting in significant salary cuts despite the airline consistently posting profits,” it said.

Meanwhile, the airline has cancelled about 75 flights today.

The budget airline has asked passengers supposed to fly it on Wednesday “to check if their flight is affected, before heading” to the airport. “The situation is dynamic as senior cabin crew are reporting sick at the last minute, just before they are to operate flights. While we are proactively cancelling flights till next Monday, the actual number may differ depending on the crew turnout. We are minimising international disruptions and less than 20% of the cancellations will be of our overseas flights,” say sources.

Airline mergers have not been easy globally with India being no exception due to severe reasons like different work cultures. Three mega mergers — Indian Airlines into Air India; Sahara into Jet and Deccan into Kingfisher — attempted in 2006-7 had been disasters with both Jet and Kingfisher closing down subsequently. Air India was privatised and returned to its founder Tata Group in January 2022 along with AI Express.

Before acquiring these two airlines, Tatas already had as many airlines — full service Vistara and budget AirAsia India. The salt-to-satellite conglomerate is merging full service Vistara into AI and budget AirAsia India into AI Express. Since AI is still part erstwhile AI and part erstwhile IA, the Tatas are actually merging five airlines simultaneously while attempting the toughest ever airline turnaround (of the Maharaja) in the history of aviation. While this is not an easy task by any stretch of imagination, Tatas pulling this off successfully is crucial for Indian aviation as the country is gearing up to get mega hubs and needs its own mega airlines with IndiGo and Tata.