 "Air India to raise bond amount for new pilots to stem poaching")
Air India is in the process of raising bond amount for the new pilots boarding the airline, in a bid to stem their migration to the rivals after acquiring high-cost training at the expense of the national carrier.
Air India currently spends a whopping Rs 25-60 lakh on training of a new entrant to fly a particular type of aircraft after his or her induction, which needs to be recovered if the pilot leaves airline before the mutually agreed time, sources said.
The airline had made new pilots sign a bond of Rs 2.5 lakh to Rs 14 lakh in the recent past, which is now being revised upwardly, they said.
"We spend huge sums on type-rating these pilots. However, at times, these well-trained pilots get poached by the rival carriers, who put them direct into flying without any additional training or incurring an extra cost," they added.
As many as 98 trained pilots quit Air India between April 1, 2014 and October 30 this year to and boarded other airlines, sources said.
Type rating is a regulating agency's certification of a pilot to fly a certain aircraft type that requires additional training beyond the scope of the initial license and aircraft class training.
"To deal with the issue, we may ask the pilots joining the carrier to sign bond agreement for higher values with a 5-8 years time-frame. And, if they quit prior to the agreed period of contract, they will have to shell out the bond amount," they said.
Significantly, several domestic airlines in the past have voiced their concern on the poaching of skilled workforce, particularly of pilots, engineers and cabin crew by the competitors.
Acknowledging that the industry was facing the problem of poaching, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Mahesh Sharma had in March this year indicated putting in place some mechanism to check it.
The poaching of staff "results in crippling shortage of trained manpower for airlines... We can ask the DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation) to frame guidelines to address this matter," Sharma had said.
