Mumbai: National carrier Air India, struggling to survive due to mounting losses, has hired relatives of its top officials as pilots, sparking criticism from the pilots' union and raising questions about the quality of the selection procedure.
Air India subsidiary Alliance Air had advertised for 10 pilots in October and recruited them in November. But interestingly, all selected candidates are related to senior officials of the civil aviation ministry and Air India, said an Air India official. They include the son of the personal assistant of Air India CMD Arvind Jhadav and the sons of executive director, northern region, Vijay Paul , general manager, operations, (western region) NP Sharma and Alliance Air company secretary Arun Goyal.
Air India confirmed these recruitments but said they were done based on a well-established system.
Some observers alleged wrong-doing. "It is quite possible that these recruitments were made for Air India officials' children to get into Alliance Air as the allowances in the subsidiary are very high and guaranteed," said Mohan Ranganathan, an aviation expert based in Chennai.
Some recruitments carried out in June last year by Air India also came under the scanner as the state-owned airline's vigilance department investigated the hiring of the sons of NK Beri, director, operations, Rakesh Anand and executive director, headquarters, Sri Krishnan. In all 40 pilots were chosen. The vigilance wing subsequently cleared all three appointments.
16/03/11 Manisha Singhal/Economic Times
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