 "Campbell Wilson")
Air India Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Campbell Wilson has said that notice period and employment bonds for pilots were justified only when an airline has spent time and resources to train its pilots for a specific aircraft, The Economic Times (ET) has reported.
Wilson told the newspaper that if an airline has invested in training people, then it's a common practice for organisations to enforce a notice period. However, this is entirely different from when the pilot has been already trained by someone else and an airline picks them up without having to make any investments towards training them, Wilson told ET when asked if a notice period is justified for pilots.
Wilson's comment comes at a time when India's youngest carrier Akasa Air, has taken legal action against its 43 former Boeing 737 pilots who resigned without serving the notice period of six months. Moreover, many of these 43 pilots have joined Air India Express, the low-cost subsidiary of Air India, which operates similar types of aircraft, ET reported.
Akasa has said that it had gone through financial and reputational loss because of the sudden resignations of the pilots and the airline has sought a compensation of Rs 21 crore from each pilot, the ET report said.
Most of the 43 pilots who left Akasa worked with Jet Airways or SpiceJet in the past and were already trained in flying the Boeing 737 aircraft. However, these pilots had to go through an operator conversion course, which includes ground classes and a proficiency check, which evaluates pilots' ability to carry out normal, abnormal, and emergency procedures in real-time situations in a simulator, the ET report added.
Meanwhile, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in the Delhi High Court categorically denied that the petitioner (Akasa Air) provided any documents or reasons to it (the respondent) in respect of flight cancellations because of the pilot resignations. This is in contrast to Akasa Air's statement in the high court on Tuesday that more than 1,000 flights were cancelled from August 1 to September 19 due to the abrupt resignations of 43 pilots.
