Airlines cut wages, re-negotiate contracts to tide over Covid-19 crisis
Airlines are slashing salaries and re-negotiating vendor contracts as drastic fall in passengers has hurt revenue.
Go First has cut staff salaries by around 16 per cent while IndiGo and SpiceJet are enforcing a leave without pay (LWP) policy and pay by the hour structure respectively to prune expenses.
Vistara, which reversed pay cuts for junior staff including managers and cabin crew in March, is not touching employee salaries at the moment and instead focusing on vendor renegotiation and maximising cargo revenue. An Air India executive said efforts are on to pay salaries by 7th or 8th of June.
Daily passenger traffic fell from the peak of around 300,000 in February to less than 40,000 towards the end of May on the back of statewide lockdowns and mandatory RT-PCR testing. This resulted in airlines grounding planes and cancelling fights.
