Air India crew crisis: Airline fires 30 employees over mass sick leaves, sends ultimatum to others

Tata Group-owned Air India Express has sacked around 30 cabin crew members who went on mass sick leave without notice, which led to the cancellation of over 100 flights since Tuesday night, affecting around 15,000 passengers. 

Reportedly, the 30 crew members received the termination notices on Wednesday night. The airline has given an ultimatum to the remaining crew members reporting sick to join the work by 4pm Thursday or face termination.

At least 74 flights scheduled for Thursday have been cancelled as a result of the crisis. The airline has about 1,400 cabin crew, including 500 at the senior level.

The fiasco began after more than 200 crew members started reporting sick from Tuesday night in protest against alleged mismanagement at the airline.

A section of the cabin crew at the airline was apparently unhappy for some time now, especially after the start of the process to merge Air India Express with AIX Connect, formerly AirAsia India, a CNBC report said.

In late April, a union representing a section of the Air India Express cabin crew alleged that the airline is being mismanaged and there is a lack of equality in the staff treatment.

The recent incident at Air India Express comes a month after Tata Group full-service carrier Vistara witnessed pilot woes, forcing it to temporarily cut down capacity by 10%, or 25- 30 flights daily. 

As part of consolidating its airline business, Tata Group is merging Air India Express and AIX Connect, as well as Vistara with Air India, it said.