NEW DELHI: Budget airline IndiGo on Thursday reinstated the salaries of its pilots and cabin crew by another 8% from August 1. Additionally, the airline will also reinstate layover and deadhead allowances for these employees from July 1.
It also reinstated the work pattern for pilots, which would ensure that pilots earn more. However, there will be fewer leaves. Even after the increase, these pilots’ pay will remain 16% lower than the pre-Covid level.
This decision comes days after a very large section of its cabin crew took mass sick leave to attend Air India’s recruitment drive, resulting in a major embarrassment for the airline as 55% of the flights were delayed on Saturday.
Earlier in April, IndiGo had reinstated the salaries of its pilots by 8% hike. However, it is yet to match salaries of pre-covid level. The airline had introduced a 28% pay cut in May 2020 in a cost-cutting exercise after the Covid-19 pandemic halted flight movements.
“We were able to reinstate 8% effective April 1, 2022, and had committed to you that an additional 6.5% would be implemented from November 1,2022, based on the environment. Subsequently, based on your feedback and enhanced stability in our commercial network, we were able to reinstate layover and deadlock allowances to pre-covid levels effective July 1, 2022,” read an internal commune of IndiGo.
A few pilots of IndiGo TNIE spoke to were not elated by the 8% hike and said that the management should have matched the pre-covid salary as they are working more than ever.
IndiGo denies reports of in-flight smoke, engine shutdown incidents
India’s largest carrier IndiGo on Thursday said there was no smoke in the cabin of Raipur to Indore flight on Tuesday (Jul 5)but ‘mist was created’ by heating, ventilation and air conditioning system due to humidity. It also denied that there was an in-flight shutdown of engines on its flights.
“There have been statements made on in-flight shut down of engines on IndiGo flights. There have been no such incidents on our aircraft in the recent past,” said the private airline, which operates more than half of domestic flights.
According to the airline, these reports have been falsely propagated by entities with vested interests, to mislead customers and authorities IndiGo’s statement of flight safety comes amid a large number of technical glitches reported by other airlines, especially SpiceJet.
In the past three weeks, SpiceJet was involved in at least eight technical malfunctions.