In a desperate attempt to reduce manpower costs after it announced a strategic alliance with Kingfisher Airlines on Monday, Jet Airways, India’s largest private sector airline, said it planned to axe another 1,100 employees over the next few days. Most of these employees are under probation and are not confirmed.
The airline already laid off 800 non-confirmed employees today, a move that drew protests by staffers in front of the Mumbai headquarters.
The move follows two earlier rounds of lay-offs in Jetlite, formerly Air Sahara and now a 100 per cent subsidiary, — 700 employees this August and 1,200 last August, soon after it acquired the loss-making budget carrier.
With the announcements, Jet Airways, which has 13,000 employees, will be able to reduce its workforce by about 15 per cent.
Explaining the rationale for the huge retrenchment, Saroj Datta, executive director of Jet Airways, said: “We are grounding aircraft on both domestic and international routes. The decision to cut staff is more sudden than we expected, but we have complied with all the norms.”
The carrier is also reducing the number of flights in the winter schedule by 15 per cent in line with the slowdown in growth of the sector.
Industry experts said Jet, which had hired staff for its big international move, has a higher aircraft-to-employee ratio than its partner — 85:1 to Kingfisher’s 20:1.