IndiGo poaching our staff: Alliance Air
IndiGo has allegedly sent feelers to several Alliance Air employees in the past few days.
Mumbai: Alliance Air, a subsidiary of Air India that operates aircraft manufactured by ATR — a firm that makes aeroplanes with up to 90 seats — plans to approach the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) after IndiGo placed orders of 50 ATR planes and allegedly started poaching the former’s staff.
Top officials said if IndiGo were to successfully lure Alliance Air’s staff, it might directly impact Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious regional connectivity scheme Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik (UDAN), which seeks to connect tier-2 and tier-3 cities.
IndiGo has allegedly sent feelers to several Alliance Air employees in the past few days.
According to Alliance Air CEO C.S. Subbiah, the low-cost carrier (LCC) has been openly offering jobs to its pilots. Alliance Air, which plans to triple its fleet of ten ATRs by the end of this fiscal year in order to participate in the UDAN scheme, has nearly 1,000 pilots.
IndiGo, in the previous week, had announced that it would obtain 50 ATR 72-600 planes, out of which 20 are likely to be introduced by December next year. The carrier also hopes to launch its turboprop operation by December 2017.
However, IndiGo has rubbished the allegation, stating that Alliance Air pilots had been approaching it.
“It has taken us more than three years to build a resource-based airline and we are progressing on that front because we are sure the regional connectivity will be a success. If by poaching from other carriers IndiGo disrupts the whole regional connectivity scheme, then it needs to stop. It takes nearly four months and costs approximately Rs 24-25 lakh per pilot for ATR-type rating training. With readily available trained pilots, IndiGo will save on both time and money needed to equip them and other technical staff with skills to operate the ATR planes,” said Mr Subbiah.
Top Air India officials claimed that the airline appears to be heading for an all-out war with IndiGo like the time the two airlines had come up with the banners directly targeting each other at the Mumbai airport. The ministry of civil aviation had to step in to end the row.