These kind of employee dissatisfaction situations are common, whenever there are merger attempts between companies, Airlines and pilots are no different ! However, unhappy pilots of this Indian carrier want an amicable solution.
On Saturday, Vistara's CEO Vinod Kannan, announced that more than 98% of the airline's 1,000-odd pilots had agreed to a new pay deal. But, there are still some concerns among pilots about lower pay and disruptions as the airline, owned by Tata, prepares to merge with Air India by the end of the year.
Under the effort of stremlining its Airlines business, Indian conglomerate Tata Group is merging its full-service Vistara into Air India and its low-cost carrier (LCC) AIX Connect (previously AirAsia India) into Air India Express.
After facing certain amount of disruption in flights due to the shortage, Vistara Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Vinod Kannan said the airline will review the current roster system after discussions with pilots.
He stressed that there was no unusual increase in the number of passengers. But, the carrier has temporarily reduced flight operations to ensure adequate availability of pilots.
In a statement, Vinod Kannan, the CEO of Vistara said they were aware that some pilots raised concerns and queries regarding the contract and they were engaging with them to clarify and resolve the same.
"We would like to again clarify that these disruptions were due to the cascading effect of a multitude of factors. While we do have adequate crew for normal operations, since we have been operating on a high utilisation, we were challenged due to operational disruption," read the statement from the CEO.
The airline has also said that it is continuing to hire more pilots and carefully scaling back operations for resilience and buffer in the rosters.
According to the Times of India, Vinod Kannan said,
"We are aware that some pilots have some concerns and queries regarding the contract. We are engaging with them to clarify and resolve the same. However, this has not caused any visible spike in attrition among the pilots."
To address the concerns of the passengers, who have had to suffer due to flight cancellations and delays, the airline has temporarily reduced the number of flights. Instead, it has deployed larger aircraft like the B787-9 DreamlinerTM and A321neo on select domestic routes.
This would aid in accommodating more passengers. The CEO's statement comes in response to several flight delays and cancellations over the last few days due to crew unavailability.
This was because pilots sought sick leaves all at once, due to a revised salary system the airline was trying to implement ahead of its merger with Air India.
The new salary structure slashed Vistara pilots' confirmed pay to 40 hours of flytime from the current 70 hours. It also required them to show up to work for at least 15 days in order to be eligible for 40 hours of flytime pay.
As per Vinod Kannan, within the pilot group there are people with different profiles and pilots can adopt different lifestyles through the airline’s advanced roster system.
He said that the airline will take the opinion of the pilots and consider necessary amendments. The Vistara chief said,
“There will be talks about this.” Obviously, we cannot have different roster systems for different groups of pilots. We have to adopt what most people agree on. We are working on it.”
Pilot dissatisfaction has been fueled not only by Vistara but also by other group airlines due to the allowance cut, poor work-life balance, and flawed rostering, all of which the management of Vistara has admitted.
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