New Delhi: Surviving on tax-payers' dole out, state-owned Air India has been reduced to a fishing pool for foreign airlines eyeing highly-trained pilots. Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways held a road show to hire Airbus A-320 pilots in Gurgaon on Sunday and Monday, and over 200 of the 300 Delhi-based AI pilots attended the event with their resume, sources say.
"The interviews and hiring process will begin in a couple of months. The number of AI (domestic, erstwhile Indian Airlines) pilots who went there was surprising. Almost three-fourth of the Delhi-based AI pilots went there," said a pilot who also took part in the show.
Etihad has gone on a hiring spree from India after tying up with Jet Airways and now aims to together challenge the market leadership of Emirates Airline — often called the de facto national carrier of India — here. While pilots of other airlines that have A-320 fleet such as Gurgaon-based IndiGo also applied to Etihad, AI domestic pilots are a highly disgruntled lot. Their main grouse is the government's failure to being in pay parity among them and their AI international counterparts.
01/04/14 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India
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"The interviews and hiring process will begin in a couple of months. The number of AI (domestic, erstwhile Indian Airlines) pilots who went there was surprising. Almost three-fourth of the Delhi-based AI pilots went there," said a pilot who also took part in the show.
Etihad has gone on a hiring spree from India after tying up with Jet Airways and now aims to together challenge the market leadership of Emirates Airline — often called the de facto national carrier of India — here. While pilots of other airlines that have A-320 fleet such as Gurgaon-based IndiGo also applied to Etihad, AI domestic pilots are a highly disgruntled lot. Their main grouse is the government's failure to being in pay parity among them and their AI international counterparts.
01/04/14 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India
