What's wrong with our airlines? IndiGo's job ad has a clue

IndiGo plans to hire as many as 100 expatriate pilots this year to add to its roster of flight captains and plug shortages that have forced India’s biggest carrier by market share to cancel flights, said a person with knowledge of the matter. The move will help it maintain schedules but increase staff costs, experts said.The carrier has more than 200 planes and a pilot strength of over 3,000, which includes over 1,200 commanders, more than 50 of whom are expats. The hires will treble the number of pilots from overseas.IndiGo’s crew addition has lagged its aggressive capacity addition. The airline had to cancel close to 150 flights in the last few days. Bad weather in Delhi and partial closures at Mumbai airport added to pilot constraints.The airline cancelled 49 flights on Wednesday and will be cancelling 30 of its daily 1,300 flights everyday this month. It has attributed flight disruptions to external conditions.The hiring will increase IndiGo’s staff costs at a time when it is trying, with limited success, to curtail non-fuel expenses. With a basic salary of $13,000 on average, expat pilots in India command salary premiums of up to 35%over their Indian peers. 67985300 IndiGo spent Rs 835 crore on staff expenses in the December quarter, up 36% from the year earlier. Its total costs, excluding fuel, in the period rose 39% to Rs 4,628 crore. In the last three fiscal years, salary expenses have risen 50% (FY16),14% (FY17) and 20% (FY18).IndiGo’s problems also point to a broader issue facing the country’s aviation industry—a paucity of experienced commanders to fly its rapidly expanding fleet. Indian airlines are adding close to 1,000 airplanes in the next decade. Indi-Go, with an orderbook of more than 400 planes, leads this capacity addition and hence challenges before it are more acute than those for its rivals.CAPA-Centre for Aviation, a Sydney-based consultant, estimates the current number of pilots in India at 7,963. In 10 years, airlines will have to hire 17,164 more. Airlines have been trying to lower their expat pilot count to reduce costs — from 10.5% in FY14 to 8.1% in FY18 — but that’s likely to swell again.India’s airlines have around 4,000 commanders, of which 324 are expats. CAPA estimates a 14% shortfall in pilots in the next decade as fleets get bigger in India.

from Economic Times http://bit.ly/2Ib5C9X

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