For long the pampered Pilots of the Air India have had their way with their own management, feckless governments, fare paying public and the rule of law. Every time they had an industrial dispute or felt that the Air India management (which in effect means the Ministry of Civil Aviation, GoI) their pilots would ‘fall’ sick and their engineers would experience ‘tennis elbows’.
The resulting disruption of the operations and flight schedules would end up with the fare paying passenger disgusted with the Airlines. Somehow or other, the Airlines as a whole and the pilots associations in turn have escaped ‘class action’ suits for their absolute selfish actions, which have caused anxiety, misery and disruptions in life of innumerable passengers.
OTOH, the pilots and the Air India staff have enjoyed one of the most handsome pay packets with terminal benefits (pun intended) and too many allowances and reliefs which aren’t known outside the company. Apart from Telephone charges and Petrol consumption reimbursement for Pilots, there are free tickets for him, his wife, dependendents, including his parents et. al., to list one.
Tell me, if a Pilot is flying an air plane over Europe or to the US about 3 weeks out of 4, how is he reimbursed for Telephone calls at Mumbai or Chennai or the company pays for filling Petrol in his car during the period? Trust me, it happens.
So, once the pilots and engineers start falling sick, the management would run around like a headless chicken and the feckless Minister in charge (whether from Congress, the BJP, the NCP or any other shameless parties) would suspend or sack a few pilots. After a few days, both the sides would climb down, sit down for talks and the sacked pilots and engineers would be taken back in, reinstated, with no penalties for their transgressions.
We don’t know whether such pilots and engineers are toasted in ‘win-by-falling-sick’ club, but I am sure they and their pampered brethren have grown cocky and smug, with the conviction that even if they are sacked today, they would be reinstated with honours within a month.
Apart from the non-justification of asking for raise in pay and other emoluments in a sick company, isn’t the tactic of calling in ‘sick’ en masse an outright lie? Isn’t it wrong by the yardstick of Satyagraha? If you don’t want to work, call a strike and call it a strike. Please don’t call it ‘sick leave’, and treat us all - the fare paying passengers and the tax paying citizens - as fools.
Just look at it - A company which has accumulated losses of 25,000 Crore and is expecting a bailout from GoI to the tune of Rs. 30,000 Crore is pampering its staff? Instead of trying to tease and please its fare paying passengers?
What a communist piece of shirt!
But it seems the cocky Air India pilots have underestimated the present Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh. For all his faults, he has one characteristic - not blink first. This time around, looks like the GoI, and the present UPA administration under the bumbling bureaucrat of a PM, has finally a Minister who has guts; who isn’t afraid to stand up to the bullies. Till now this feckless bumbling administration had only the likes of bullying-the-internet-community Kapil Sibal and spineless-to-stop-2G-scam P. Chidambaram or outright jokers like the reading-speech-of-Portuguese S.M. Krishna or others or the coffin-dancer Sushma Swaraj or the idiotic decision to merge the profit making Indian Airlines with the eternal loser Air India.
Just to put some facts in, sometime in 1993 or 94 I was offered a ticket at 50% of the fare to fly from Chennai to Mumbai as a ‘relative’ of an Indian Airlines retired official; the flight I had to take to report for duty to my company and claim reimbursement. The idea was that since the ‘eligible ticket’ of the retired official was going to lapse, and in those days there were not so many flyers (being before the IT revolution in India), and since I was going to take an IA flight as it is, it will be a win-win situation. The guy gets half of the fare as ‘compensation’, and I get the full fare as reimbursement of which ‘half’ will go into my pocket.
What do you think I did?
What only an idiot like me can do - refuse!
I hope Ajit Singh is the guy who finally breaks the back of this over-reaching Air India Pilots and Engineers and finally gives us an Airline which we, the Indian citizens can depend upon to serve us.
The resulting disruption of the operations and flight schedules would end up with the fare paying passenger disgusted with the Airlines. Somehow or other, the Airlines as a whole and the pilots associations in turn have escaped ‘class action’ suits for their absolute selfish actions, which have caused anxiety, misery and disruptions in life of innumerable passengers.
OTOH, the pilots and the Air India staff have enjoyed one of the most handsome pay packets with terminal benefits (pun intended) and too many allowances and reliefs which aren’t known outside the company. Apart from Telephone charges and Petrol consumption reimbursement for Pilots, there are free tickets for him, his wife, dependendents, including his parents et. al., to list one.
Tell me, if a Pilot is flying an air plane over Europe or to the US about 3 weeks out of 4, how is he reimbursed for Telephone calls at Mumbai or Chennai or the company pays for filling Petrol in his car during the period? Trust me, it happens.
So, once the pilots and engineers start falling sick, the management would run around like a headless chicken and the feckless Minister in charge (whether from Congress, the BJP, the NCP or any other shameless parties) would suspend or sack a few pilots. After a few days, both the sides would climb down, sit down for talks and the sacked pilots and engineers would be taken back in, reinstated, with no penalties for their transgressions.
We don’t know whether such pilots and engineers are toasted in ‘win-by-falling-sick’ club, but I am sure they and their pampered brethren have grown cocky and smug, with the conviction that even if they are sacked today, they would be reinstated with honours within a month.
Apart from the non-justification of asking for raise in pay and other emoluments in a sick company, isn’t the tactic of calling in ‘sick’ en masse an outright lie? Isn’t it wrong by the yardstick of Satyagraha? If you don’t want to work, call a strike and call it a strike. Please don’t call it ‘sick leave’, and treat us all - the fare paying passengers and the tax paying citizens - as fools.
Just look at it - A company which has accumulated losses of 25,000 Crore and is expecting a bailout from GoI to the tune of Rs. 30,000 Crore is pampering its staff? Instead of trying to tease and please its fare paying passengers?
What a communist piece of shirt!
But it seems the cocky Air India pilots have underestimated the present Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh. For all his faults, he has one characteristic - not blink first. This time around, looks like the GoI, and the present UPA administration under the bumbling bureaucrat of a PM, has finally a Minister who has guts; who isn’t afraid to stand up to the bullies. Till now this feckless bumbling administration had only the likes of bullying-the-internet-community Kapil Sibal and spineless-to-stop-2G-scam P. Chidambaram or outright jokers like the reading-speech-of-Portuguese S.M. Krishna or others or the coffin-dancer Sushma Swaraj or the idiotic decision to merge the profit making Indian Airlines with the eternal loser Air India.
Just to put some facts in, sometime in 1993 or 94 I was offered a ticket at 50% of the fare to fly from Chennai to Mumbai as a ‘relative’ of an Indian Airlines retired official; the flight I had to take to report for duty to my company and claim reimbursement. The idea was that since the ‘eligible ticket’ of the retired official was going to lapse, and in those days there were not so many flyers (being before the IT revolution in India), and since I was going to take an IA flight as it is, it will be a win-win situation. The guy gets half of the fare as ‘compensation’, and I get the full fare as reimbursement of which ‘half’ will go into my pocket.
What do you think I did?
What only an idiot like me can do - refuse!
I hope Ajit Singh is the guy who finally breaks the back of this over-reaching Air India Pilots and Engineers and finally gives us an Airline which we, the Indian citizens can depend upon to serve us.
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