A pilot has to fly minimum 80 hours per month, but these 10 hardly flew and still got huge sums.
Debt-ridden Air India (AI), which is seeking a bailout package from the Union government, paid significant amounts to pilots who hardly flew.
DNA has in its possession confidential internal audit documents of the national carrier which reveal that 10 pilots of sister concern Alliance Air were paid on an average Rs88,000 per flying hour for six months beginning January 2010 — total Rs2.87 crore.
The office of R Dayal, executive director (internal audit), examined the payment.
A pilot has to fly a minimum of 80 hours per month, but these 10 hardly flew. Taking advantage of a dubious contract, some of them flew two hours in six months, some 11, while others flew 12 hours.
The contract extraordinarily hikes the allowance
per hour from Rs4,750 to Rs9,150 without valid giving any reason. Besides, it fixes
an amount of Rs2,200 per night stop.
The most glaring example is that of Captain Satbir Singh who flew only two hours in six months but was paid in excess of Rs20 lakh, making him perhaps the costliest pilot in India with an average asking rate of Rs10 lakh per hour.
The audit notes that the 80-hours-per-month limit in itself is way beyond the average flying hours clocked by Air India pilots.
It says, “The minimum of 80 hours per month fixed for these pilots is very high as compared to the average flying hours put in by pilots in NACIL [National Aviation Company of India Limited]. The minimum number of hours has to be reviewed.”
“On one hand, these pilots were grossly underutilised in Alliance Air and on the other, they were not made available for flying A-320 aircraft, depleting the effective flying crew strength in NACIL,” it observes.
In January this year, the Air India management deputed the 10 pilots — seven from Delhi, two from Chennai and one from Hyderabad — to fly B 737-200 aircraft, mainly for freight operations. Now, Alliance Air has stopped operating B 737 and decided to send the pilots to Air India Express.
The audit is only for a period from January to May 2010 and the actual impact on the exchequer could be much higher, sources said.
Captain HC Malik, former advisor to the civil aviation ministry, said, “It’s shocking. Usually, an Air India pilot gets about Rs3 to Rs3.5 lakh per month as salary. If a cash-crunched airline is paying Rs88,000 per hour to its pilots it’s not only highly irresponsible but questionable.”
An Air India spokesperson said, “Pilots were paid as per contract. If they were not utilised properly, it’s the airline’s [Alliance Air’s] fault.”
Vipin Kumar Sharma, managing director of Alliance Air, did not respond despite several attempts by DNA to contact him.
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