SpiceJet sent 80 pilots on leave without pay: Steps taken to cut expenses, said- we have recruited more pilots than required A to Z Counsel

SpiceJet on Tuesday sent some pilots from its staff on leave without pay for 3 months. The airline has given information about this by issuing a statement. Although the airline did not specify the number of pilots, the number of pilots quoted by media reports is around 80. These pilots belong to the Boeing and Q400 fleet.

The company said that in order to cut costs, we have decided to temporarily send some pilots on leave without pay for three months. This decision is according to SpiceJet’s policy. Under this policy, SpiceJet does not lay off its employees and it was followed by the company even in the peak of Corona epidemic. With this decision, there will be enough number of pilots to pilot half our fleet.

The airline is going through financial troubles
In its statement, the airline also said that the Boeing 737 MAX aircraft survived two fatal crashes after a technical snag. Due to this the aircraft had to be grounded between March 2019 and November 2020. In such a situation, the airline which is already going through financial crisis has suffered further.

The airline said – we have recruited more pilots than required
SpiceJet said in the statement, “SpiceJet inducted 30 aircraft in its fleet in 2019 after the grounding of Boeing 737 MAX aircraft. Even after this, the airline continued to hire new pilots in the hope that the Max would soon be reintroduced. But the grounding of Max Fleet kept on increasing, due to which SpiceJet has more pilots than necessary.

‘However, we are confident that this situation will be fixed soon. We will bring Max aircraft back into service very soon and all pilots will be able to join the job again. During Leave Without Pay, all pilots will be eligible as before for all benefits accruing to the employees.

DGCA asked SpiceJet to operate on half the aircraft
On July 27 this year, the Director General of Civil Aviation ordered SpiceJet to operate only 50% of its fleet of flights for the next eight weeks after several SpiceJet planes crashed in flight. Since then the airline has been struggling financially. Read full news here…

Two months ago, in just 18 days, SpiceJet planes suffered 8 technical glitches. Due to this many planes had to make emergency landings.

The deadline of these eight weeks is going to end soon. Regarding this, SpiceJet said that the airline has enough pilots so that after the lifting of the ban imposed by the DGCA, the airline will not face any problem in operating on its full schedule.