Jet sacks 850 staff in biggest lay-off in Indian aviation history

Mumbai: In what is unarguably the largest lay-off in the history of Indian aviation at least 850 Jet Airways cabin crew members, possibly more if other ground staff are also on the list, have been laid off.  The private carrier, India's largest by number of passengers carried, said those receiving termination letters were mostly on probation.

Though Jet Airways has officially yet to comment on the extent of the lay-off, it has confirmed that terminations were in the offing. "Because of the slowdown in traffic, both on international and domestic routes, we have announced discontinuation of a number of flights. As a professional organization we had to do a comprehensive rationalization of our network by taking into account the current traffic demand, our capacity utilization, etc. Consequent to this, we will have to release the unconfirmed staff to match up with the changes," a spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, Jet promoter Naresh Goyal also confirmed to the media that all those laid off were probationers. However, the "unconfirmed staff" could include people who have put in as much as one and a half years of service with the carrier.

Jet Airways, which had a total of 1,903 cabin crew at its Mumbai base, will now "release" 850 of them.

Reports suggest that the lay-offs have come in spite of assurances given by top management to staff as recently as two months ago.

With the recently introduced Mumbai-Shanghai-San Francisco route reporting low occupancy, operations on this sector will be terminated by January and it is likely that experienced staff will also face the axe. The route has reported a low 40 per cent occupancy on the Shanghai-San Francisco-Shanghai leg.

Airline staff told the media that so far the airline had been on a cabin crew hiring spree and the last batch of 18-20 flight attendants was inducted just three months ago. Apparently, the tie-up with Kingfisher has proved to be a game changer for the carrier.