Not waiting for striking pilots to return: Government

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Hardening its stand, Government on Sunday made it clear that it is not waiting for striking Air India pilots to return to work but making plans to move ahead with fresh inductions.

Reminding the pilots and other employees that their survival was linked to Air India, Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh said that nobody is going to give anymore public money to the airline and ‘they will not survive for too long’ if the company does not become competitive.

"We are not waiting. We are making plans. If you take the pilots trained in V-737 or Airbus 320, (in) three to six months they can be trained to fly these planes," he told reporters on the sidelines of a book release function in Hyderabad.

Later in Mumbai, the minister stuck to his stand during a meeting with executive pilots who urged the minister to look at an early solution to end the strike by nearly 400 pilots owing allegiance to the Indian Pilots Guild.

"We want an early solution to the strike by the IPG pilots. We wanted the minister to resolve the issue but he stuck to his stand, saying that the pilots will have to end their strike first and the reinstatement of the 101 terminated pilots will be taken up only on case-to-case basis," sources said after the hour-long meeting.

The meeting was held against the backdrop of the executive pilots writing a letter to Singh stating that they were stressed out and would not be able to maintain the curtailed international schedule much longer.

The striking pilots, of whom 101 have been sacked, are protesting alleged discrimination in career progression vis-a-vis their counterparts in the erstwhile Indian Airlines. The pilots have been on strike since May 7.

On a two-day visit to review the Mumbai airport modernisation and upgradation work, Singh is learnt to have bluntly stated that the strike is illegal and that the agitating pilots have not heeded sane advice to return to work.