Pvt Jet Airways hands over pink slips to 50 expat pilots
2 Jun 2015 1:37 AM GMT
Jet Airways has handed over pink slips to 50 of its expat pilots by prematurely terminating their contracts, bringing their number to 88, as part of its cost-cutting measures as well as reducing dependency on the high-cost overseas flight crew.
“We have prematurely terminated the service contracts of 50 expatriate pilots between April 1, 2014 and March 31, 2015,” Jet Airways acting Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Ravichandran Narayan said during a post-earnings analysts call. Narayan said as part of the contract obligations, the airlines paid retrenchment compensation to the sacked pilots.
The Naresh Goyal-promoted airline has a total of 1,120 pilots, after termination of the service contracts of these 50 expats, Jet Airways now has 88 foreign pilots. The country’s civil aviation regulator, Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), has also given the airlines a deadline of December 2016 to phase out the expatriate pilots. Narayan, while speaking about the measures taken by <g data-gr-id="49">airline</g> to contain cost, said Jet Airways has taken several steps particularly in the areas like sales and distribution, engineering and maintenance in this regard.
“We are continuously improving our aircraft utilisation by adding more red-eye flights and early hour departures in our schedule,” he said. A red-eye flight departs late at night and arrives early next morning. Because of their very low priced tickets, these flights are quite popular abroad, especially in the US and Europe. Narayan also said the airline was in the process of restructuring its overseas hub at Abu Dhabi by <g data-gr-id="47">rejiging</g> some of the flights and withdrawing a few.
“We are restructuring our Abu Dhabi gateway by converting Goa-Abu Dhabi-Goa flight into seasonal one and cancelling the Abu Dhabi-Kuwait and Abu Dhabi-Dammam services,” he said, adding the airline has also decided to reduce the frequency from three daily flights to two on Mumbai-Bangkok route from July 15. We continue to rationalise our route network in line with the industry
condition and traffic evolution, he added.
Meanwhile, Jet Airways stock slumped 6 <g data-gr-id="46">per cent</g> on Monday after the company reported a net loss of Rs 1,729 crore for the three months ended March 2015. The stock tanked 6.06 per cent to settle at Rs 362.05 on the BSE. During the day, it dipped 7.62 per cent to Rs 356. On the NSE, it declined by 5.87 per cent to end at Rs 361.90. The company’s market valuation fell by Rs 265.21 crore to Rs 4,112.79 crore.
Jet Airways narrowed its net loss to Rs 1,728.99 crore for January-March 2015, helped by lower expenses, fall in aviation fuel costs and higher income from operations. The carrier, which has completed the first year of its strategic alliance with Etihad, had a net loss of Rs 2,513.57 crore in the year-ago period.
However, total income from operations jumped to Rs 5,064.52 crore in the fourth quarter ended
March 2015 from Rs 4,566.17 crore in the same period a year ago. In the 2015 March
quarter, standalone total expenses declined to Rs 5,595.64 crore as against Rs 5,932.21 crore in January-March 2014.
Malaysia Airlines technically bankrupt: CEO
Malaysia Airlines is “technically bankrupt”, its new German CEO said on Monday as he outlined plans to stabilise the failing flag carrier including 6,000 job cuts. “We are technically bankrupt and that decline of <g data-gr-id="82">performance</g> started long before the tragic events of 2014,” Christoph Mueller told reporters, referring to two deadly disasters that rocked the airline last year. Malaysia Airlines took its first major steps today under Mueller, sending termination letters to all of its roughly 20,000 employees, followed by new contracts offered to 14,000 of them.
The exercise - which was expected - trims around 6,000 jobs. Mueller had previously initiated turnarounds at Ireland’s Aer Lingus and Belgium’s Sabena that earned him the nickname “The
Terminator” for his job-slashing.
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