Air India to have a reserve bench of cabin crew similar to IT firms

The practice will improve OTP for the airline significantly

A passenger recently tweeted about an Air India flight being delayed because the cabin crew did not show up on time. To avoid such incidents, Air India is planning to form a ‘reserve bench’ of cabin crew who can be called deployed in case of manpower shortage.

According to a senior Air India official, the state-run carrier is going to hire around 1,500 people on contract basis, who will be kept as reserves and paid a standard salary. “The base salary will be Rs 40,000-50,000 a month. Whenever they fly, they will get compensated depending on the flying hours.”

Air India aims to have a reserve bench strength of 25 per cent of the total workforce.

The national carrier has around 3,200 cabin crew members on its payroll. “We have to significantly increase our workforce because we are going to expand by inducting around 30 aircraft in three years,” said the official cited above.

The concept of a reserve bench is popular among information technology companies, which hire people in bulk and use them according to projects.

The reserve crew will be stationed in crucial locations, such as metros.

“We plan the scheduling in such a way that if the first flight from the metro can fly on time, we can maintain a better on-time performance (OTP). The target that has been given is 93 per cent OTP,” said the Air India official.

With Air India’s increasing number of domestic flights, the requirement of crew members have gone up. “At present, 60 per cent of our crew fly abroad and they have to be given rest periods according to regulations. Plus, 20 per cent of the workforce is on leave at a single time, leading to shortage of staff,” he said.

According to the Director General of Civil Aviation’s flight duty time norms, a crew cannot fly more than 1,000 hours in a year. On an average, an Air India crew member of wide body aircraft flies around 80 hours a month, whereas one operating in a narrow body aircraft flies 75 hours. “So, a crew who flies abroad will exhaust the entitlement in nine or 10 months,” the official noted.

The practice of keeping reserve crew will also make business sense for the airline, because at present, six business class seats are reserved in long haul flights for the crew to rest. “With this, we don’t have to shut business class seats for the crew,” the official said.

The reserve crew will be trained to operate in different type of aircraft. “Hence, the process will take some time to implement. But, once it is implemented, OTP will improve significantly,” said the official.