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.
