Mumbai: A group of Air India pilots have threatened to stop operations in case their flying allowance dues are not paid immediately.

They accused the management of paying the salaries and perks of other employees in full even if with a delay, the same for the pilots and cabin crew are “ignored”, despite the fact that flying allowances of these two licensed categories of employees form a big part of their salaries.

“We would like to inform you if the flying allowance is not paid immediately, we may not be available for flying duties,” the Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA) said in a communication to Air India’s director of finance today.

The group ICPA represents more than 700 pilots of the airline’s Airbus 320 family fleet.

“Since the company has paid the salary, the pilots will report to the office for any office duty of their expertise other than flying duties,” it added.

As per the details through a source, flying allowance are paid after two months.

“As a rule, flying allowances for the month of June should have been paid on August 1, but they remain unpaid even till today,” the source said.

ICPA warned the Air India management that it is waiting with an expectation of a positive confirmation on the matter, “failing which we will be forced to direct our members not to report for flying duties and only management should be held responsible in case of any disruption of flights”.

As the government stopped funding the state-owned carrier, it has been facing insufficient funds following which a decision was taken to privatise it last year.

However, the state-owned carrier did not get any suitor by the stipulated deadline, forcing the authority to put the privatisation plans off the table for a later period and started reviving the capital infusion plan.

To help the Airline, the government is set to give an additional funding of Rs. 980 crore in FY19.

Amid the cash paucity, the carrier has already delayed salaries of all of its employees six times in the last seven months.

The Carrier paid July salaries to employees in the month of August 14.

“As you are already aware the salary of a pilot in Air India only constitutes to 30 per cent. Every month we are being ignored while the company pays the rest of  the employees in full and does not pay the flying allowance to pilots and cabin crew which forms the major part of our total earnings,” ICPA said.

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