HR issues surface at Kingfisher

350 cabin crew quit last year, shortage of 200 air hostesses; airline denies shortage.

Attrition in cabin crew has been substantial at Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Airlines over the past year, say insiders, though the company says the availability is adequate.

Insiders say about 350 cabin crew left their job in the past year. The present total of the crew is 1,500. Though 150 recruits in this period are being trained, the shortage is estimated at 200 air hostesses. “Our cabin crew members are fatigued and overstressed,” said an airline executive, who blamed “bad human resource policies” for so many cabin crew having quit.

Kingfisher’s rival, Jet Airways, lost a little over 100 cabin crew members in the past year.

However, a Kingfisher spokesperson denied a problem, while not commenting on the reported turnover figure. “There is no shortage on cabin crew, as during the downturn we redeployed excess cabin crew in our airport ground services for a short while, thereby increasing our service delivery on ground. Currently, post crew turnover, which is in line with industry standards, the excess number has only balanced off,” said an e-mail response.

The executive quoted earlier: “The senior ones have left our airline and we are trying to replace them by trainees, which will badly increase the strength of our untrained cabin crew. These untrained staff will not be able to act the way they are supposed to during emergencies.”

To which, the spokesperson’s response is that around 150 of the new recruits were under training and a lot of experienced crew from other airlines, both domestic and international, had joined since Kingfisher was the ‘employer of choice’ for cabin crew.

The executive contended cabin crew do not get inflight rest time in the India-London flights, while other airlines did. To which, the emial response from the airline was that the roster was diligently planned in line with regulations, with adequate rest time. “The Delhi-London flight does not require in-flight rest for cabin crew as per DGCA regulations. However, on the night long-haul flights, that is, post 2200 hours, each crew member is given a rest of two hours on board,” said the response.

Kingfisher operates around 375 flights a day to 71 destinations in India and abroad. It reported net loss of Rs 1,647.2 crore in the financial year ended March 2009. It then reported a net loss of Rs 187 crore in the first quarter of this year and Rs 230 crore in the second quarter, though the performance was better as compared to the previous quarter.