The Hindu Business Line : IndiGo beats headwinds, plans to hire more staff

New Delhi, Nov. 10 At a time when several domestic airlines are looking to prune their staff strength, the Delhi-based low cost airline, IndiGo, is on the look out for more pilots, cabin attendants, customer service and airport service agents.

“There is no deceleration in our growth plan. You have to take a long-term view, not a 90-day view, of life. We are doing more number of flights now, than a few months ago. We have an aircraft delivery virtually every six weeks for the next few months. So it is only natural that we will need more people,” the newly appointed President, Mr Aditya Ghosh, told Business Line.

The airline, however, refused to specify the number of people it was planning to hire. “It is difficult to quantify the number of people that we need because as we grow, we also enjoy benefits of scale,” Mr Ghosh said. The airline, which started two years ago with a single Airbus A-320 aircraft, currently has a fleet of 19 .

The economic slowdown and decline in passenger numbers have forced several airlines to look at pruning costs including deferring delivery of aircraft, cutting back on routes and laying off staff. IndiGo officials claimed that they have been seeing a healthy growth in passenger numbers and had no plans to defer delivery of any of the 100 Airbus it has ordered.

In the recent past, both Kingfisher Airlines and Jet Airways have asked their staff to leave. While Jet Airways offered a “voluntary retirement scheme” to more than 300 of its staff, it was also planning to lay off about 1,900 of its staff. The decision was, however, taken back after a wave of protests. In late September, Kingfisher announced that 300 employees had “parted ways” with the company – a move that will bring about a saving of more than Rs 5 crore annually.

Air India was also considering a sabbatical scheme for its non-operational staff to take leave for between 2 and 5 years. The implementation of the scheme is expected to help save the state-owned airline between Rs 16 crore and Rs 20 crore annually.

The issue of staff lay off was also raised at a meeting that the Ministers of Civil Aviation and Petroleum had recently with the top brass of Kingfisher, Air India and Jet Airways. At that meeting, it was made clear to the airlines that they should not lay off any of their workers.

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