Air India facing crew shortage on certain routes

Mumbai: Air India is being weighed down by a bulging workforce. Ironically, it is also facing a cabin crew shortage for domestic, and some short-haul international operations, undertaken by IC coded flights (the former Indian Airlines).
Over the last few months, the airline has just been meeting the mandatory crew requirements set by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. Typically, an Airbus 320, which has a minimum requirement of four crew members, needs a (crew) complement of at least six. However, Air India has confined this to four onboard.
“The last round of recruitments was done around two years back and the number of flights has increased since then,” an airline official said. Moreover, Air India has kept 150 recruitments on hold due to its liquidity crunch.
Typically, cabin crew members earn additional allowances based on the number of flying hours, for working on late shifts or for flying overseas.
Someone with over three to five years of experience gets paid an additional Rs 600 for each hour of flying. If such people have logged around five hours of flying during the day, they would be paid Rs 3,000 as additional allowance. Apart from this, there is a daily allowance of $45 on international flights, along with perks such as accommodation.
21/07/09 Varada Bhat/Business Line