Air India: The Great Divide Within

New Delhi: Another factor that has affected the morale of the employees is the executive pay scale in AI which is surprisingly lower than those of IA.

"Some of us were overlooked and the discriminatory power was used to promote the other cadre. This left many saddened. After such harassment who would like to put in his best effort," asked another official.

"These are just initial problems. Once the Dharmadhikari report is implemented, I don't know what criteria it has but if it comes with the rider that the pay scale would be criteria for seniority, promotions will be a major problem."

Not just that. In the pilots case, while a commander of AI gets 8 lakh per month that of IC gets 3 lakh per month. Even a bare minimum flying allowance of 80 hours is granted to AI pilots while it is only 72 hours given to IA pilots.

"In this case there is also an issue of promotion. We don't get to fly as much as our IC counterparts do, thereby reducing our flying hours and a chance to get to the higher grade," said an agitating pilot.

Both sides also play the blame game by stating that overseas assignments as station officers are restricted for IA officials as traditionally they only had three foreign branches.

No one knows what the report by Justice D.M. Dharmadhikari submitted in January actually has suggested. Details are not available, but it is understood to have talked about the mess in the airline and has made recommendations on such critical issues like career progression, integration across various cadres, rationalisation of pay scale, allowances and incentives and overall restructuring of the entire staff of the erstwhile Indian Airlines and Air India.

Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh last week blamed the merger as the reason behind the current crisis, saying it should not have been done, or more due diligence should have been carried out the process was on.