India's flag carrier, Air India, has decided to put brakes on foreign tours of its staff unless it is "absolutely essential".
In a circular, the carrier, grappling with high aviation turbine fuel (ATF) prices and low passenger growth, said those who want to take a foreign trip should seek permission of the chairman and managing director.
"Foreign tours should be undertaken only for absolutely essential purposes. All foreign tours henceforth should be scrutinised at the functional director level and recommended to the chairman only in respect of critical cases," an Air India circular signed by Chairman and Managing Director, Raghu Menon, said.
With losses mounting to Rs 2,100-crore and ATF prices on the rise, the national carrier has been forced to resort to cost-cutting measures to boost its sagging bottom line.
Air India is expected to implement a rigorous cost-cutting regime based on the recommendations of its finance department, which was presented before the board a couple of months ago.
The circular said that foreign travel should be restricted to the bare minimum number of persons —to those who are operationally required to travel—and that "accommodation at overseas stations should as far as possible be at crew hotels where facility of lower room-charges is available."
Airline staff has also been instructed to travel only by economy class. The cost-control measures to be implemented cover areas such as contractual/casual employment/outsourcing, material consumption, outside service and repairs of aircraft, return of lease aircraft, fuel conservation, pooling of vehicles/fuel bill reimbursement and temporary postings.
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The free use of pool vehicles, including cars attached to station-managers, has also been stopped with immediate effect. A 25-per cent reduction in fuel expenses of vehicle pools is also being targeted, the circular said.
Besides, fuel reimbursements of all officials right from executive director-level to the senior managers have been capped at an upper limit of 140 litre and 100 litres per month, respectively.
Similarly, mobile bill reimbursements would be capped at Rs 1,800 per month for executive directors, while general managers cannot claim more than Rs 1,600 on this count.
These limits are applicable even to officials posted abroad.
The passenger service fee reimbursement to staff-on-leave (SOL) has also been stopped.
The circular also states that Rs 250, Rs 750 and Rs 1,000 per sector on each domestic, international and non-stop flight would be recovered to partially neutralise the increase in fuel costs with immediate effect.
Interliners from other airlines will be charged full fuel surcharge on interline tickets issued at all national and overseas stations, apart from taxes and other charges.
Reimbursement of state-owned holiday home charges and other facilities have also been withdrawn to prune costs.
Office telephone lines have been told to be linked with the leased line available in the reservation system to facilitate routing of all office lines through these lines to save on STD cost.
Menon has also instructed all heads of departments and executive directors of all special business units (SBUs) to carry out an overall assessment of the manpower situation in the company, including outsourced manpower, to identify the actual requirement.