Alliance Air pilots on strike over pay, nearly half its flights cancelled

Pilots of government-owned Alliance Air went on a flash strike on Monday seeking a salary revision that causes nearly half its flights to be cancelled.

Alliance Air has 21 aircraft in its fleet. These include 20 ATR turboprop planes and a Hindustan Aeronautics-made Dornier-228. It operates 120-130 flights daily, many of them to destinations where it is sole operator.

Its operations went haywire on Monday as over half of its 200 pilots reported sick. By the evening the airline was able to operate around 60 per cent of scheduled flights.

“It is a flash strike. There was no notice or advance intimation about the mass sick leave,” said Alliance Air’s chief executive officer Vineet Sood.

Alliance Air, until last January, was a subsidiary of Air India, which was sold by the government to the Tata group. During the Covid-19 pandemic, like other airlines, Alliance Air effected a pay cut for its pilots. The agitating pilots want their salaries restored to pre-Covid levels.

In fact, restoration of the minimum guaranteed payment of 70 hours is also one of the four demands put forth by the pilots to their management last month.

“We are persuading the pilots to come and negotiate and we are hopeful they will,” Sood said.

A civil aviation ministry official said the pilots’ demands will need to be examined. “The company has been making losses. We need to see whether it’s genuine or not, and the impact it will have on the airline. Mass sick leave is not the correct way to address the issue,” he said.

Alliance Air is a key operator of the government’s rural connectivity scheme, and links un-served towns. In fact, it is sole operator on 29 routes and the disruption of flights has caused some concern for the management.

In a statement, Alliance Air said that since no notice was served by agitating pilots, the management has taken a serious view on the development.

The airline said it had to cancel flights on 24 routes due to the flash strike. Apart from the strike, it blamed supply chain disruption and delay in availability of spares for its inability to operate flights on these routes.

“The said action on the part of cockpit crew has caused inconvenience to the travelling public, brought disrespect to the airline and also resulted in a revenue loss. Passengers were kept informed of these cancellations and have been facilitated either with full refund or have been accommodated on alternate flights,” the airline said in a statement.

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