IndiGo hikes allowances for pilots

Mumbai/New Delhi, Dec 29 (PTI) IndiGo has hiked allowances for pilots by up to Rs 2,000 with effect from January 1, weeks after the country’s largest airline faced severe flight disruptions due to pilot rostering challenges, sources said on Monday.

A lack of adequate planning in implementing the revised Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL) norms, which permit a lesser number of night landings for a pilot, has been attributed as a key reason for the disruptions that have forced the airline to cancel more than 1,600 flights on a single day.

Against the backdrop of new norms necessitating the deployment of more pilots for night operations, IndiGo has revised higher allowances doled out to the pilots.

The hikes, ranging from as little as Rs 25 to Rs 2,000, will be for various allowance categories, including domestic layover, deadhead and night. Also, pilots will be eligible for tail-swap allowance, sources said.

Generally, tail-swap refers to replacing a scheduled aircraft with a different aircraft.

The sources also said that the tail-swap allowance was not provided earlier, and the hikes will be effective from January 1.

There was no comment from IndiGo.

With the revision, a captain, who was earlier paid Rs 2,000 as domestic layover allowance for a 10.01-24-hour duration layover, will now get Rs 3,000. In the case of a first officer, the allowance for the same time frame will rise to Rs 1,500 from Rs 1,000 earlier, according to sources.

For every hour beyond the 24-hour time frame, a captain will get Rs 150 from Rs 100 earlier, while the first officer will be paid Rs 75 instead of Rs 50 earlier.

The night allowance per night hour for a captain and a first officer has been raised to Rs 2,000 and Rs 1,000, respectively.

Also, the deadhead allowance per scheduled block hour for a captain has been increased to Rs 4,000 from Rs 3,000 and that for a first officer to Rs 2,000 from Rs 1,500, sources said.

Deadhead refers to a pilot flying as a passenger to another destination to operate a flight from there.

According to them, meal allowance during transit has been hiked to Rs 1,000 from Rs 500 for captains.

The sources also mentioned that the latest hikes are just about 25 per cent of the allowances that were reduced for pilots, following the implementation of the second phase of the FDTL norms in November this year.

After disruptions earlier this month, aviation safety watchdog DGCA directed IndiGo to cut its winter schedule by 10 per cent.

IndiGo had employed 5,085 pilots at the airline, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Murlidhar Mohol had told Rajya Sabha on December 8 in a written reply. PTI IAS RAM BAL BAL