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Journalism of Courage
After a five-day strike last week which almost paralysed air services to the North-east, Alliance Air’s ATR pilots appear to have won major concessions from the management in Delhi today.
The key issue was wage revision, since the pilots on strike were demanding parity of pay and perks with their Boeing counterparts. ‘‘We can’t immediately give them equal pay. The Boeing pilots get Rs 2.2 lakh on an average while an ATR pilot gets around Rs 1.6 lakh. We have told them the revision will be graded but we cant promise when,’’ said Captain Mehboob Bhat, Executive Director (Airline Operations), Alliance Air, in New Delhi.
The other bone of contention was the number of free air passages granted to pilots in a year. From now, both Boeing and ATR pilots will get six free passages, said Captain Bhat. Besides this, the licence cancellation fee — a one-time compensation doled out by the company to a pilot whose licence had been cancelled — has already been increased to Rs 30 lakh from Rs 15 lakh.
Four ATR pilots were in Delhi today, trying to negotiate a better deal with the management. Bhat was non-committal when asked if the sacked pilots were going to be taken back. ‘‘This is not my department,’’ he said.
