Mumbai: Polishing and cleaning aircraft exteriors on a regular basis results in about 1% less fuel burn from reduced air friction at high speeds. A 1% saving translates to Rs 72 crore per annum.
Mumbai, India (
prHWY.com) May 16, 2012 - While this might sound like a suggestion made by an airline consultant for cost reduction, It actually comes from Air India pilots who have chalked out a list of recommendations to help the ailing carrier save Rs 452 crore annually. Last week, pilots of the Indian Pilots Guild (IPG) made a presentation to the airlines board sub-committee set up by Air India to eke out and implement a turnaround plan as well as deal with manpower issues complete with facts and figures on how the airline and the pilots together could bring about savings. The ailing airline has been looking at a target of saving Rs 800 crore through cuts related to employee costs. The first step in that direction was imposing a 25-50 % cut in salaries of its 7,000-odd non-union management staff, including pilots to save Rs 20 crore per month. The salary cut had to be rolled back within days of the announcement as the management pilots though they did not belong to any union went on strike en masse in protest, disrupting flights. Now, one of the two pilots unions in Air India, the IPG, has come up with in-depth measures to save costs without touching salaries. The top measure suggested was single-engine taxiing. Single-engine taxiing is an accepted practice with international airlines and carriers like Kingfisher Airlines, IndiGo having implemented it in India. The time taken to taxi an aircraft can go up to hundreds of thousands of hours if calculated on an annual basis for all sectors operated by Air India worldwide, said Capt Tauseef Mukadam, IPG general secretary, who made the presentation. It estimated that the airline could save about Rs 140 crore a year by using only one engine for taxiing during the post-landing phase. But why are pilots doing the job which should be left to consultants As commanders and co-pilots, our members are engaged at the very frontline of the company's product delivery system and thus have an insight into the functioning of most departments of the company on a day-to-day basis. We are in a unique position to offer tangible means of improving efficiencies, said Capt Mukadam. The cost-saving measures suggested by the IPG will result in savings of up to Rs 452.8 crore. This would offset any need for a downward revision of allowances and perks of employees which could demotivate the workforce, he added. The other recommendation was about rostering pilots more efficiently by automated planning and scheduling of worldwide cockpit crew movement to save up to Rs 65 crore per year. Replacement of foreign pilots with Indians would save Rs 75 crore annually, upgradation of computerised flight planning and dispatch system would save Rs 70 crore as well as imparting ground training to pilots online would reduce training costs by Rs 16 crore per year.
For the national carrier, cutting costs by Rs 3,000 crore and increasing revenue by Rs 2,000 crore annually for a couple of years is the only means to put itself on a path to recovery. Air India is estimated to have accumulated losses to the tune of Rs 7,200 crore in the past two years and it could go up by another Rs 5,000 crore for the year 2009-2010.Its working capital borrowings have crossed Rs 16,000 crore. The government has promised conditional help to the airline in the form of Rs 5,000 crore equity infusion provided that it cuts costs and increases revenue.
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