Heeding to the demands of a section of employees, Air India management has withdrawn some recommendations of the Dharmadhikari Committee on flight duty time limitation (FDTL) of the cabin crew.
The Shiv Sena-affiliated Cabin Crew Association, a breakaway faction of the All India Cabin Crew Association, had threatened to strike work from Saturday if these recommendations were implemented.
Following the threat, "Air India management yesterday agreed to withdraw some of the steps it had taken towards the implementation of the Dharmadhikari Committee report, which was earlier approved by the Aviation Ministry and the Air India Board," an airline source told PTI here.
The spokesperson was not available for comments.
The Committee had recommended strict implementation of FDTL as per the DGCA norms for cabin crew and pilots. FDTL denotes a set of rules and norms which fix flying duty time and rest period among various things to ensure that the flight crew work with an adequate level of alertness for a safe flight, taking into account the fatigue factor.
The Dharmadhikari panel had also sought implementation of a computerised flight software programming for pilots and cabin crew as part of the cost-cutting measures and also to streamline operations.
"However, these have now been withdrawn" following the strike threat, the sources said.
The Air India management had acquired Sabre airline scheduling system at cost of USD 650 million to achieve operational efficiencies but later switched to a cheaper ARMS program, they said.
The schedule rostering system which was manually handled by cabin crew union and pilots union themselves (where staff bid for their choice of flights) was stopped in March, following orders from the Civil Aviation Ministry, the sources said.
