IndiGo facing headwinds from pilots over salary cuts

A commanding pilot with IndiGo said they were being treated by the airline as bonded labourers'.

- DIBYENDU MONDAL

A silent rebellion is brewing within the Lpilots and cabin crews of IndiGo, India's largest airline (by volume), over discontentment on "unjust" salary cuts and non-restoration of the same even at a time when the airline has started operating at full capacity. The Sunday Guardian spoke to a number of pilots and cabin crews working with IndiGo who have expressed their extreme unhappiness over the non-restoration of salaries to pre-Covid 19 levels, despite the airline resuming all scheduled flights.

A commanding pilot with IndiGo, who did not wish to be named, told this newspaper that they are being treated by the airline as "bonded labourers". "When the airline has started operations in full capacity and we pilots are doing the exact number of hours of flying as in pre-Covid level, why would we take a salary which is almost 22% less than what we were getting back in 2019-2020. We have raised this issue with the management, but what we got in return was like a slap on our faces. We have been reduced to bonded labourers," the commanding pilot said.

IndiGo had reduced salaries of all its pilots by 28% in 2020 when the country went into a lockdown and all flight operations were suspended owing to the spread of Covid-19 across the country and world.

Since then, over the last two years, despite flight operations slowly picking up and now being restored to full capacity, the pilots claim they are receiving much lower salary than they used to draw before the pandemic.