Wednesday, March 9, 2011

http://indianairlinesnews.blogspot.com/ m 9




1. Indigo Airline woman pilot held for faking documents for licence
"Parminder Kaur Gulati, 38, was held from her residence at Kirti Nagar area in West Delhi Tuesday," said deputy commissioner of police Ashok Chand.

Director of training & licensing of civil aviation department DC Sharma filed a complaint that Gulati had obtained an airlines transport pilot license (ALTP) on forged document.

The complaint came after Gulati was grounded following an incident of hard landing of Indigo Flight-6E-332 at Goa Jan 11. Director general of civil aviation (DGCA) has set up its own enquiry panel.

"They found that she had submitted forged result card of pilot license examination," said the officer.

"She had failed in air navigation paper and was absent in the paper of radio aids and instruments in January 2009. She again appeared in April and July 2009 sessions, but failed both the time," said Chand.

She submitted forged result card of passing air navigation and radio aids & instruments to DGCA April 11, 2009 and on November 16, 2009 she was issued an ATPL.

Gulati completed her bachelor of science from Khalsa College of Delhi University in 1995. In 1997, she got private pilot license from Delhi Flying Club and she then her commercial pilot license from the same club in 1998.

In May, 2006, she joined Air Deccan as co-pilot and in November, 2007 she joined Indigo Airlines as co-pilot.

"After getting ALTP in November 2009 on forged document, she became a captain in Indigo Airline.

2. Air India: The Maharaja in a Royal Mess
 
Sometimes, perception is everything. And oftentimes, so is reputation. On both counts, our national carrier is taking a beating. Air India, neck-deep in losses, is clutching at its only hope - a Rs 10,000 crore (by ministry estimates) bailout plan. This monumental figure was referred to again by new Civil Aviation Minister Vyalar Ravi in conversations with journalists recently, while adding that he has requested the finance ministry to consider an immediate infusion of Rs 2000 crores into the cash-strapped airline. But '10,000 crore rupees' has been around for the last two years. In 2009, the government refused to oblige even then, demanding the airline implement a turnaround plan instead, through better administrative and operational management. Now, the ministry has changed, but the figure has remained constant, just like the obfuscation on exactly what this amount is made up of. As relations between the management and unions reach an all-time low, with pilots of the erstwhile Indian Airlines threatening to go on strike, the perception that things are going horribly wrong is getting more and more apparent.

If key components of the 40,000-strong workforce are to be believed, the arch villain of this piece is AI Chairman and Managing Director Arvind Jadhav. The CMD's interviews to the media are certainly not helping him in the popularity department. In one memorable interview to Business Standard in 2009, where he ranted against the (then) 32,000 strong staff, the CMD said, "(They are acting) like instead of drinking Evian water, you have to swallow Bisleri! A 15-day pay deferment and morale is low - that is extent to which (they) are pampered" and "Let them go to court, the time for talking is over." And then, just this January, in another interview (this time, to The Tribune), Jadhav said the workforce was now 40,000 - 8,000 more employees since 2009, on his watch! So is the number of employees increasing, even as airline management claims to have implemented a sizeable portion of the turnaround plan, where employees are said to be the primary offenders?

Fact remains, the airline is suffering from a Rs 13,000-odd crore debt, and desperately needs to cut costs and increase profitability before it can hope for any significant infusion from the government. The CMD no doubt has a tough job on his hands - when he says he has no choice but to be 'ruthless', one can see why. The airline is four times more overstaffed than other private airlines, and with all the ills of a public-sector company - top-heavy, administrative mismanagement, lack of transparency. The effort to merge Air India and Indian Airlines has remained only on paper, with both sets on employees still operating under entirely different hierarchies and wage scales. This massive brigade needs to be stream-lined, trimmed and integrated into a productive, profitable whole - and where unions are involved, that's easier said than done.

Which brings us back to the problem of perception that seems to be ailing the airline almost as much as its actual financial woes. Many say the 'attitude' with which the CMD spurns recalcitrant unions has directly lead to repeated strike threats - the most recent one being from the erstwhile Indian Airlines pilots association. Case in point: In accordance with the Industrial Disputes Act, the pilots gave the airline 14 days notice before the strike scheduled for March 9. It was not till the day and night before D-day, that frantic negotiations began with the airline management - that too, only on the urging of the Civil Aviation Minister. Sources in the airline say they were not given any instructions to begin talks till the Minister ordered them to do so.

A marathon 10-hour meeting (with the Chief Labour Commissioner and airline management) later, the pilots have now decided to defer the strike to March 15. The pilots are asking for wage parity with Air India pilots - that is, a fixed pay component that would assure they are paid for 80 flying hours irrespective of their schedules, something which is standard practice across airlines. CNN-IBN recently revealed through an RTI document, how IC pilots' flying hours have come down to a mere 53-55 hours a month, when they are under contract to fly a minimum of 60 hours and a maximum of 90 hours a month. The main reason for the lower flying hours are bad management of pilot roster schedules. But a more damning reason is that the airline has curtailed scores of domestic and international routes, most of them highly profitable ones, with seat load factors of 70-100per cent. The main beneficiaries of these route curtailments have been private airlines, many of which have started new routes at the same time, on the same sectors with practically the same call sign numbers from the very next day. Pilots claim their salary has reduced 40 per cent since the merger, primarily because of these route cancellations and poor management of their schedules that results in them flying less than before. The curtailment of routes has always been something of an open secret, but with the presentation of documents proving these goings-on in meetings with Vyalar Ravi last month, the minister seems to have taken a proactive stand in breaking the impasse.

The Minister also told the media last month that disinvestment is still not an option, and so now, ironically, insiders say, the only hope for negotiations appears to be at the doors of the civil aviation minister and secretary (ex-DGCA chief Naseem Zaidi) who have turned into mediators between employees and the much-maligned CMD. Skeptics say the strike threat is an empty one, but should this threat be carried through, both perception and reputation of the airline at this, its lowest point, could suffer irreparable loss. Cash losses itself could go into hundreds of crores, especially with 90 per cent of the domestic routes and a sizeable portion of international routes (esp to Gulf countries and south-east Asia) being brought to a standstill.


3. Air India's treat on International Women's Day

NEDUMBASSERY: To celebrate the International Women’s Day, Air India operated an Ultra Long Haul flight from Delhi to Toronto on Tuesday night with an all-women crew.
Air India had operated several flights both in international and domestic sectors with women crew on board on Women’s Day earlier too. Air India created history in aviation last year when women crew operated an Ultra Long Haul flight from Mumbai to New York to mark the occasion of Women’s Day.
Civil Aviation Secretary Nasim Zaidi flagged off the flight, Air India AI 187, to Toronto in Delhi, said AI sources. Flight AI 187 will be the first flight to take off among the 11 all-women crew flights scheduled for operation across its domestic and international network by Air India on Tuesday.
Capt Rashmi Miranda will be the Commander and Capt Sunita Narula, the First Officer, on the flight. Harpreet A De Singh, Head-QMS, will carry out the Line Observation Safety Audit. The flight was dispatched by Rashmi Verma, according to Air India sources.
The national carrier provides equal opportunities to women in all areas of its activity, including specialised technical areas and senior management.  Women pilots, flight dispatchers, aircraft maintenance engineers, safety and quality auditors, cabin crew, doctors, technical officers, simulator maintenance engineers, ground instructors for training pilots, etc,  form part of a highly skilled, technically proficient team of women in Air India.
Air India has 157 women pilots flying its fleet of wide and narrow body aircraft on international and domestic routes. Air India employs more than 5,300 women, sources said.
Air India’s scheduled flights with all-women crew in the domestic sectors on Tuesday were AI409/410 on Delhi-Patna-Delhi sector, AI-469 on Delhi-Raipur-Nagpur-Delhi route, AI-811/812 on Delhi-Lucknow-Delhi route, AI-603/604 on Mumbai-Bangalore-Mumbai sector, AI-569/167 on Chennai-Mumbai-Chennai, AI804/506 on Bangalore-Delhi-Bangalore sector, and Air India Express flight IX302 between Kozhikode and Mumbai.

4. What India's Airlines Can Teach America

As a consultant, I flew over 500,000 miles in a short, four-year span.  More recently, after spending two weeks on a five-airport/11-plane/four-city tour throughout India in February, and the repeated aviation-related topics that this very space regularly addresses, I wanted to share my thoughts on what we could learn (and in some cases, not repeat) here in the U.S. from the Indian airline industry and airport procedures.

1. Flights can be advanced (seemingly without too much notice)

I had never had that happen in the US before, have you?
Pros: Getting to your destination early is never a bad thing in my book
Cons: Could I have missed my flight even though I got there on time?
My take: If everyone is on board/checked-in, airlines should make more of an effort to try to leave before time (regulations and air-traffic control withstanding).

2. SMS alerts to share real-time airline status

These are extremely prevalent and relied upon to share information about airline status (I feel that this is not as effectively leveraged in the U.S.).
Pros: Quick, short information about flights shared in real-time.
Cons: Some (minor) infrastructure cost involved
My take: US airlines should make this more of a default option to share real-time information with passengers.

3. ID checks

There was one occasion when I was never asked to show my ID (but a single member of my six-person boarding party did).
Pros: Takes me back 15+ years ago when I believe there were fewer, less stringent ID checks here.
Cons: We'll never know if number 913 from the no-fly or persons-of-interest lists just boarded that flight.
My take: TSA is doing a great job here!

4. Name/boarding pass stringency

This is a tougher one.  I recently got married, and we haven't gone through the official name change (yet) for my wife. Having said that, there were a few occasions where her boarding pass had my last name, or my boarding pass had some spelling errors.  With a little bit of conversation, these were never a problem to reason out with the attending officer when checked (see #3).
Pros: Airline staff were reasonable and never caused a problem to allow us to board.
Cons: In the highly unlikely event that two people have slightly differing names, this could be cause for a harmful event.
My take: Last November, I purchased two flights tickets for friends of mine to fly from Boston to DC.  I accidentally put the same last name on both tickets (even though they were not related).  We didn't realize this until the day of the flight, and my friend frantically called me saying that they won't let him board because the name did not match.  After several frustrating phone calls, I had to repurchase a brand new ticket for him in his name.  Even though the "name" is effectively "arbitrary" (one can type whomever or whatever name you want upon purchasing), there is zero tolerance for changing that name post-purchase. This policy needs to change.


By

NEHA JAIN

      

   

     



            
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