India’s largest airline by market share IndiGo, recently announced that it has decided to not go ahead with its earlier decision of employee salary cut for the month of April.
The airline said that the decision is in deference to the Central government’s wishes.
“In deference to our Government’s wishes of not reducing pay during the lockdown, we have decided not to implement the previously announced pay cuts during the month of April,” CEO Ronojoy Dutta told employees in an email on April 23.
He added, “However, Excom members and SVPs have volunteered to take pay cuts this month. For everyone else, you can expect your April salaries to be paid without the pay cuts.”
The airline had earlier this month announced that employees of the carrier would take a 25% pay cut along with Dutta himself leading from the front to take a pay cut.
In an attempt to boost the morale of the employees and generate hope amid the severe financial crisis Dutta further said, “Another area where we can exercise control is in shaping the nature of the customer experience as we take to the skies again. We are working actively with the Government, the airports, and our competitor airlines in defining the nature of this experience.”
“Customers will probably start flying tentatively at first and we need to make sure that we instill enough confidence in the early users so that the first trickle of customers turns into a torrent,” he added.
He added that the company had just one source of revenue at the moment, its cargo operations.
Commenting on the current circumstances, Dutta said, “We have two prime enemies we have to battle with. The first is the live force of the virus that is a threat to our health and the second is the dead hand of economics which is likely to dampen customer demand in the immediate future. Reiterating that the company is focusing energies in controlling costs, Dutta said, “going forward we will be sharpening up our core competence even more.”
The aviation industry is in a complete lockdown mode with bookings being cancelled until any further orders. Aviation players across the globe have taken extreme measures to cope with the recent turmoil. All of IndiGo’s peers, including SpiceJet, GoAir and Vistara, have either cut pay or sent a large part of their staff, on leave without pay.
