National carrier Air India is struggling with acute shortage of cabin crew and staff, which has caused many delays and cancellations in the past few months.
National carrier Air India is struggling with acute shortage of cabin crew and staff, which has caused many delays and cancellations in the past few months. According to sources from the airline, it requires around 1,000 pilots while it has only 600. Similarly, it has only 1,800 cabin crew members serving the airline at present, as opposed to the requirement of 3,000. However, AI has started recruitment for the vacant positions in order to address the problem, Air India chairman and managing director, Ashwani Lohani, said.
“We will get more cabin crew members by September, as 125 (newly selected members) have been sent for training. Similarly, for 500 vacancies for pilots at the airline, 250 had applied. Out of these, 190 have cleared the written examinations and their training has started. They may join service by the end of May,” Mr Lohani told The Asian Age.
According to Mr Lohani, the airline will soon tide over the crisis. as new recruits will join the firm after training.
Commenting on the staff crunch, a senior crew member told this newspaper that in recent months, several AI flights had been forced to be cancelled, delayed or merged with other flights due to the staff crunch.
Recently on April 7, a Bangalore-bound aircraft from Mumbai airport could not leave the city airport even after two hours of its scheduled departure time, as the crew was not available. Later, the passengers messaged the aviation minister on Twitter and necessary arrangements were done.
As per the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) rules, a crew member should be deployed on each door of the aircraft but due to the staff crunch, no crew member has been deployed at the emergency doors of the aircraft, revealed an internal mail communication of the airline, to which this newspaper has access.
A senior crew member has confirmed this revelation. He also claimed that staff crunch had led to fatigue among the crew members and several complaints had been made about it, as they were being forced to work for more hours.
