Jet loses key senior staff, denies attrition is a problem

Mumbai: Over the past few weeks, four senior ex-ecutives of Jet Airways, including the south-east Asia chief V Raja and head of train-ing Michael Tan have put in their papers. The airline brass in London is reportedly trying to hold back key senior executives.
At junior levels, the airline is losing people to domestic rivals who are aggressively taking away airport managers and cabin crew. “About 370 staff have resigned from the airport services division and 270 cabin crew have quit in the ten month period from April’06 to Janu-ary this year,” said an insider. Attrition rates are about 30% in these departments, as airlines such as Indigo, SpiceJet and Kingfisher have picked up several people from Jet.
Responding to an official mail from ET on the issue, Jet Airways chief executive officer Wolfgang Prock-Schaeur said, “Our attrition rate is reasonably under control. Overall it is 10-15%. For crucial personnel groups like pilots, it is practically non-existent.”
One of the reasons for people leaving at senior levels is the complaint that expat consultants virtually run the airline.
21/03/07 Cuckoo Paul/Economic Times