Airlines look at staff, pay cuts

New Delhi: After rationalising flights and routes, major domestic airlines like Kingfisher, Jet Airways and SpiceJet are introducing sharp cutbacks in staff and salaries to cope with slower passenger growth and rising aviation turbine fuel (ATF) costs.
Manpower typically accounts for 10-15 per cent of an airline’s total costs.
Full-service carrier Kingfisher Airlines has decided not to renew the contracts of the 50 expatriate engineers employed by Air Deccan, the low-cost carrier with which it merged last year. The merged entity has over 800 engineers.
Expatriate engineers earn a monthly salary of Rs 2.5 lakh against around Rs 1.5 lakh for an Indian counterpart. Engineers account for around 15 per cent of manpower strength.
Meanwhile, JetLite, formerly Air Sahara, Jet Airways’ fully-owned subsidiary acquired last year, has halved manpower strength from 4,500 to 2,200, closed 37 offices and cut salaries 15 per cent over the past one year. Low-cost carrier SpiceJet, which has 2,400 employees, has shelved plans to employ 200 more people following its decision to cut domestic flights from 117 to 100 a day. The carrier also plans to give three of its 18 aircraft out on “wet lease,” a deal that includes pilots and cabin crew.
Airlines also said cutback options for those that are expanding operations are limited.”Since we are in expansion mode, we cannot cut the number of pilots we employ. And since there is so much competition, cutting pilot salaries is out of the question,” said a Kingfisher executive.
18/06/08 Anirban Chowdhury/Business Standard