Airline HR heads meet to check rising wage bill

New Delhi: Alarmed by a rising wage bill and shortage of manpower, for the first time HR heads of all the domestic carriers are meeting this week in the Capital to take stock of the situation. On their agenda are devising ways to expand the resource pool and encourage sharing of critical resources such as engineers and technical staff, and avoid poaching from each other.
An HR head from an airline agreed that the ballooning wage bill was a concern for all players. The matter becomes more acute in case of low-cost carriers striving to keep their overall costs down in an competitive environment.
Industry players point out that the informal non-poaching pact among the carriers has helped stem large-scale movement of pilots from one airline to another. “We can look at sharing of engineers and technical staff,” Air India executive director (finance) S Venkat said.
The meeting has been organised by the Federation of India Airlines, the association of scheduled carriers, and will be chaired by Air India’s executive director (HR) VA Ferreira.
The shortage of resources is felt most in case of pilots. Industry estimates a need for around 500 pilots per year for the next 10 years. Pilot training schools currently churn out anywhere between 250-300 pilots annually, with expat pilots filling in the vacant cockpit seats.
One of the key drivers of the recent mergers and alliances in the industry — Air India-India, Jet-Air Sahara, Kingfisher-Air Deccan — has been the need to cut cost of operations by sharing resources.
02/07/07 Sudipto Dey/Economic Times