NEW DELHI, March 22 (Xinhua) -- Pilots of India's private airline "Jet Airways" have written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Civil Aviation Minister Suresh Prabhu, urging them to instruct their company's management to give them their pending salaries.
Speaking to Xinhua over the phone, Vice-President of the "National Aviator's Guild" (NAG) Captain Asim Valiani said that there are around 1,500 pilots and nearly 400 engineers who have been affected due to non-payment of salaries for over three months now.
The NAG is the registered trade union of the Jet Airways pilots of Indian nationality, with a total official membership of around 1,135 pilots.
"The airline's management says that the company is facing financial crisis and is not able to pay salaries to their pilots and engineers as they draw big packages every month," Valiani said and added that the rest 18,000 low-paid employees were getting their regular salaries.
"Pilots too have a family to support. Marriages of children have been postponed due to non-payment of salaries," the pilots wrote in their letter addressed to the civil aviation minister, a copy of which was also sent to the prime minister.
Urging both the minister and the prime minister to intervene and get their salaries released, the pilots mentioned in the letter that they feared that the airline was on the "verge of collapse" which would leave thousands of employees unemployed.
This would change the dynamics of aviation in the country as air fares will increase due to the "reduction in capacity and travelling public will face major convenience", added the pilots' letter.
Two days ago, the agitated pilots threatened to stop flying from April 1 if their pending salaries are not cleared by March 31.
"We are waiting for the management to respond to our demands by March 31. We hope the matter would be resolved by this date. If not, we will chalk our next course of action," said a senior pilot working with the airline.
Jet Airways has been facing the worst financial crisis of its 25-year existence with more than one billion U.S. dollars of debts. The carrier is said to have delayed payments to banks, suppliers, and aircraft lessors.
Meanwhile, according to the office of the country's Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the current fleet of Jet Airways is likely to operate only about 140 flights a day, down from an average of about 650 flights a day in March 2018. Nearly a third of the airline's 120-plane fleet has been grounded.
