Out on a wing

HR management is the key in the airline business

Human resource issues in merger and acquisition are some of the toughest challenges for corporations. This is a lesson the management of Tata- and Singapore Airline-owned airline Vistara has absorbed the hard way. Over the past few days, the airline has been mired in chaos, cancelling almost a tenth of its 350-odd daily flights after pilots reportedly called in sick to express their dissatisfaction with new contracts ahead of a merger with formerly state-owned Air India.

This is a predicament with which Air India’s former owners would have been familiar, not least during the merger of Air India, the