Working out

New Delhi, Feb. 23: The Indian Airlines board today decided to trim fat by extending a popular voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) by four months even as it cleared plans to hire some 200-250 new cabin crew and 139 pilots. The airline also intends to hire some four new Airbus 320s.

The board also took note of the Rs 700-crore slash in Boeing offer price but did not accept it as the bidding process was already closed.

Sources said, “This could, however, be used in the final financial negotiations with Airbus.”

“Some 450 employees have already taken VRS. We expected another equal number if not more to avail of the scheme,” said top airline officials.

Airline executives said IA, which has one of the highest employee to aircraft ratios at 353 workers for every plane in its fleet, does not want to shed too many workers, especially younger ones as it plans to increase its fleet size by almost 50 per cent within the next four years. Most airlines in the world have ratios lower than 75:1.

“Normal attrition rates combined with new planes should bring down our ratios nearer to global levels soon,” said officials.

However, the gaps will continue to crop up in the critical areas of pilot and cabin crew as the fleet grows. “We have already advertised for 139 pilots last week. We will put out ads for cabin crew soon,” said officials.

Analysts calculate, that over the next four years, the airline will hire about a thousand new frontline pilots and cabin staff even as it sheds double that number of backroom and low-skilled staff.

However, intense lobbying by rival aircraft manufacturers and objections from the Planning Commission has held up the purchase plan and till that girdle knot is cut, things would remain as it is with the airline.

The Planning Commission has objected to the civil aviation ministry’s proposal to buy 43 Airbus planes for IA and instead asked it to buy up to 28 aircraft which would service domestic feeder and trunk routes only.

The remaining 15 aircraft, the Commission avers, should be purchased after new technologies, which have come into the market, are evaluated. If this is done then Boeing Corp is likely to renew its pitch of a cut-price offer for Boeing 7E7s, which it wants IA to buy for its trunk and high density Gulf and South East Asian routes.

The BJP-led central government had earlier taken a tacit decision to split its plans to buy 74 new aircraft for the two state run airlines — 43 for Indian Airlines and 28 for Air-India — and another three luxury jets for the VVIP squadron, between the two rival aircraft manufacturers.

The unofficial split decision taken at the very highest level was made after US president George W. Bush and his French counterpart Jaques Chirac led a high-pressure war on behalf of the two aircraft makers.