NEW DELHI: Air India (AI) on Thursday claimed it has received more than 1,752 applications for pilots and 72,000 applications for cabin crew in the last two months.
The airline has also received over 25,000 applications in a little over a week from management postgraduates with three years of experience in ground-based business roles and over 2,000 applications for a New Tech centre at Kochi, Kerala. Currently, AI has nearly 12,000 staff, of which 8,000 are permanent and the rest are contractual. The expansion comes as the full-service carrier has laid down aggressive expansion plans to increase its fleet size market share.
Over the next five years, AI has plans to raise its domestic and international (to and from India) market share to 30% and triple its fleet size. “An entire generation of workforce has missed the opportunity to work for AI due to limited recruitment over the years.
We are seeking to make up for this organisational gap as we work to make AI the world’s leading airline with customer focus at the heart of its operations,” said Suresh Dutt Tripathi, chief human resources officer, AI. Increased interest among aviation employees to work for AI comes after its acquisition by the Tata Group in January this year amid falling morale of employees in other private airlines who faced severe pay cuts during peak covid-19 period and delay in restoration of salaries.
As per the Tatas, AI, which had not recruited in non-operations areas for over 15 years, is quickly adding talent in all spheres of its business. Tuhin Kanta Pandey, secretary in the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) and the key official who oversaw AI’s privatisation process, said,
“Walk-in interviews have begun in AI. People over 65 years of age are being recruited in AI. More people are being called in jobs, which is in contrast to what people were saying earlier. Post-covid, there has been a recovery…more planes mean more MROs, more orders, so the impact of privatisation is huge.”