Air India Pilots to go on strike if demands are not met

New Delhi, Nov 19 (ANI): Air India pilots, owing allegiance to the Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA), staged a demonstration here today asking the management to fulfill their demands.

The pilots held banners like ' Save Air India ' and 'Remove Arvind Jadhav'.

Arvind Jadhav is the chairman and Managing Director of Air India.

"Management is well aware of our demands. Whenever we protest if is taken for granted that is for money but it is wrong money, money is not all, we have other demands also and because they were fulfilled we were force to take our protest to the roads," said Captain Ravinder.

The pilots said that they would be forced to go on strike if the management continues to ignore their demands.

The ICPA have threatened to go on strike on November 24 if their flying allowances and other salary arrears of the past two months are not paid to them.

Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel had recently announced that Air India would by December receive equity of Rs 8 billion.

He had added that a decision would be taken on relaxing the foreign direct investment (FDI), after assessing the needs of the industry.

The airline declared a loss of billion dollars in the financial year March 2009, while in September, around 400 Air India Pilots went on mass sick leave for four days to protest against pay cuts, resulting in more than 200 flights being cancelled and the airline losing more than one billion rupees. (ANI)