With budget airline Go First seeking voluntary insolvency, hundreds of its pilots are jumping ship after months of delayed salaries and other pending dues. But a controversial DGCA rule that mandates a one-year notice period has left cockpit crew furious and helpless.
Captain Rohit Verma (name changed), with more than 15 years of flying experience, has multiple job offers from Go First’s rivals, including Air India. Salaries at Go First have been delayed since October last year by anywhere between one to three weeks. In April, the salary for the previous month was credited only on April 28, and employees haven’t yet been paid for April even though the airline operated flights in that month. Pilots also faced steep cuts since Covid-19, and Mr Verma estimates various dues owed to him along with pending gratuity to be nearly ₹20 lakh.
But the DGCA’s Civil Aviation Requirement on Flight Crew Standards Training and Licensing prevents him from securing a new job immediately. The rule makes it mandatory for commanders to serve a notice period of one year and first officers a notice period of six months, failing which their actions may be construed as an “act against the public interest” because of likely “cancellation of flights and harassment to passengers”. It justifies the long notice period on the ground that an airline spends 9 to 10 months on training a pilot. But pilots say that the rule is biased in favour of airlines, and that the DGCA has no locus standi to interfere in an employee-employer matter especially when it doesn’t offer safeguards for pilots when an airline fails to meet its obligations such as payment of salaries.
“How do I feed my family. There are also penalties being incurred on credit card and EMI payments, compelling us to liquidate our investments resulting in losses on our short and long-term capital gains. Our juniors have had to borrow money from their parents or lose face before landlords because of their inability to pay house rent,” explains the pilot in his late thirties.
He adds that pilots who joined the airline post COVID-19 were also required to furnish bonds of up to ₹80 lakh to secure a job with the airline in lieu of training, and a promise of early release for flying.
The notice period issue has pilots sandwiched. While their new employer has demanded that they sign an indemnity form to protect itself from legal liabilities, pilots are apprehensive that Go First may not provide them a No Objection Certificate, along with other mandatory documents such as certified copies of logbooks that contain details of their flying hours, a no-incident/no-accident certificate, or even block them from withdrawing their airport entry passes so that they can procure a new one as employees of the next company.
Last week, the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) admitted Go First’s plea for insolvency and granted it an interim moratorium under which lessors, lenders, vendors, airports and the regulator were barred from taking any adverse action against the airline such as seizure of aircraft, suspension of fuel supply or withdrawal of landing and departure slots at airports. The court also instructed the interim resolution professional to ensure there was no retrenchment of employees.
However, the airline’s CEO, Kaushik Khona, told his staff during a recent townhall that the airline has been granted protection from releasing pilots, which employees say is a deliberate misinterpretation of the court order.
Various pilot groupings including the Federation of Pilots moved Delhi High Court in 2017 against the controversial DGCA rule, following which the Delhi High Court in July 2018 granted an interim stay on the implementation of the rule and restricted the DGCA from taking any coercive action against pilots. It said that the terms of contract between pilots and airlines would prevail. But pilots say that the order doesn’t help them as in many cases their contract itself refers to the specific DGCA rule, which would continue to hold. The matter has since been adjourned at least 10 times for various reasons including due to Covid-19 related restrictions. The next date of hearing is now expected to be on May 17.
On April 4, the FIP also wrote to Minister of Civil Aviation Jyotiraditya Scindia underlining that the notice period rule was “exploitative” and posed “significant safety risk to the aviation industry.”
It said that along with the long notice period, airlines also insisted that pilots pay a hefty bond or furnish open dated cheques which often forced “dissatisfied and predictably mentally stressed pilots to continue working with their current employers against their free will. This makes them prone to anxiety, workplace harassment, loss of better job opportunities in the global market, and low morale.” It urged that the government to issue guidelines requiring employers to amend their terms and conditions, which it said should be based on global practices where pilots are required to serve a notice period of no more than one to three months.
Questions sent to Go First remained unanswered till the time of going to press.
