Upto 15% Salary Cut For 40% Vistara Employees Till March; But Pilots Will Get More Allowance

As per the reports, the Indian full-service carrier, the joint venture of Tata Group and Singapore Airlines, Vistara is continuing the pay cuts of its staff till March but will do away with the three-day leave without pay for pilots effective from January 1.

Continuing Salary Cut For Employees 

According to the Vistara spokesperson, they will be implementing a 10 percent salary cut for the pilots at the same time increasing their monthly base flying allowance to 40 hours from 20 hours at present.

Prior to this, Vistara announced a reduction in salary of nearly 40 percent of the total workforce from June 30 till December 31.

 The move was to deal with the low cash flow amid a weak passenger demand in the wake of the pandemic.

This has affected pilots, who were getting base flying allowance since April, which is a fixed component of the salary, for 70 hours per month, the allowance was reduced to 20 hours till December 31.

Three Day Leave Without Pay

In addition to that, the airline also introduced a three-day ‘Leave Without Pay’ for the pilots In September.

The spokesperson said, “the pay cut scheme at Vistara will continue to be in effect until March 31, 2021, as part of which the Vistara CEO will continue to take the maximum cut of 25 percent in monthly pay,”.

Further, the spokesperson said that the airline’s senior staff, including members of the management, will be affected by a cut of 15 percent in monthly pay; while for those in mid-to-junior-mid levels, the cut will be 10 percent.

“COVID-19 continues to have an industry-wide impact on business, despite improvement in the operating environment. While we currently deploy nearly 70 percent of our pre-COVID-19 capacity, our operating revenue is still at a significant distance from normal levels,” the Vistara spokesperson said in the statement.

What Does Vistara Spokesperson Say?

The spokesperson added that to this end, the airline continues to take several measures to control operational expenditures, including containment of staff costs.

In the case of the junior level employees, whose monthly cost-to-company equals or is more than Rs 50,000, will be affected by a 5 percent monthly pay cut, according to Vistara.

The spokesperson said, “For pilots, a monthly 10 percent pay cut will be applicable. However, their monthly base flying allowance will be increased from the current 20 hours to 40 hours. The scheme does not impact nearly 60 percent of Vistara’s staff at junior levels,”.

 Vistara says, “Our approach of going after measured growth in business puts the company in the position of being able to continue saving all jobs and implement rational reduction of staff costs, even though taking that decision has always been the toughest for the company’s board and the leadership,”.

Further, the airline informed about its plans to ramp up its domestic operations in line with the government guidelines.

In this process, they want to and remain operationally ready to operate more international flights whenever scheduled operations are allowed to resume.