The Maharaja Strikes Again

I was to travel to the US for 3 weeks around May 10 and was looking to book tickets online. I usually fly Air India for 3 reasons. The first is the cost. Its normally one of the more economical. (Turkish and Egypt Air are even cheaper). It flies direct and non-stop. And last but not least, if we Indians don't fly Air India, who will ?

 

I found tickets that were direct and reasonable and was in the process of booking online. Fortunately for me the Air India website was as is not unusual glitchy. Which meant my booking didn't happen. After 3 tries of filling in the same data and getting thrown out at various stages including at the payment gateway, I was frustrated and decided to look at other options. I used various portals and on makemytrip found British Airways more cost effective and would enable me to fly directly back from San Francisco as opposed to coming back to New York if I were to fly Air India. I was able to complete the process in a few minutes, as opposed to the over 1 hour struggle at the Air India website.

And guess what. 2 days before my scheduled flight date Air India pilots stopped showing up for work. Since the courts had rules that they could not go on strike, they came up with the brilliant plan if all being sick at once. I guess I got lucky and am in New York as I write this piece. Unfortunately Air India continues to be on strike, 12 days later.

 

So what exactly are the pilots issues ? An Aero blogger Rohit Rao has written an interesting piece outlining the perspective of the striking pilots.
http://aeroblogger.com/home/blog/air-india-strike-ipg-perspective/

The primary cause is apparently the fact that Air India is sending pilots from the pre merger Indian Airlines for training on the Boeing-787 Dreamliner. They have a few more demands including being able to fly first class when on duty between stations. And the fact that they should be promoted to Commanders within a fixed period regardless of the fact that vacancies may not exist.

Prima facie, all of the above sound like utter nonsense and totally unreasonable. Maybe, we don't know enough to judge whether or not these demands are reasonable. But there are a few things we do know. Firstly, some of these demands are in court. And the court ruling has been against the agitating pilots. The option is to appeal to a higher court.

In other words, the strike or sick leave is in defiance of court orders. That effectively means holding their employer, Air India to ransom. And the price. A whooping Rs. 150 million per day. This is in addition to the Rs. 70,000 million the airline is losing annually when they are flying without disruption.

The Government has recently sanctioned a bailout package of Rs. 300,000 million for the airline. This money is coming from you and me. Its the poor taxpayer who ends up paying as usual. What I find hard to understand is why exactly are we paying for the Government to run an airline. Especially when its only effective purpose seems to be to generate employment for its employees. And these employees who are grossly overpaid and are the worlds least productive in comparison to any other airline. This is not what I think but is based on employees / passenger or even employees / aircraft or any other parameter you may choose to compare.

You could understand if these employees are working hard. And serving a national need. Like the Armed Forces. But in the case of these fat cats, "Hardly" is more like it. And they go on strike once a year and threaten to go on strike twice a year. Leading to disruptions thrice a year. In the last 3 years they have gone on strike for 4 days in Sept. 2009, given a strike notice in November 2009, gone on a major 10 day strike in May 2011 and now 12 days and counting in May 2012.

Ironically the first Dreamliner which has now become a nightmare was to have been handed over to the Civil Aviation Minister, Mr. Ajit Singh around May 30th. This has now been postponed for a couple of weeks.

The Government has taken a tough stance and suspended around 80 pilots. They plan to do more. Which is very good. Unfortunately history has a way of repeating itself. And the sad part is that in all likelihood, all of the suspended pilots will be reinstated and the Government will give in to most of their demands. Thus giving a message that when you can't win in court, hijack the Government Airline and terrorize the passengers. You will get what you want. Without any consequences.

The only way this kind of blackmailing by Unions will end is when the consequences of breaking the law are unaffordable. For Air India and India's sake, I hope I'm wrong and this time around the consequences will be real and hurt the pilots exactly where they hurt all of us. In their pockets.