Air India, arm set to hire 250 Jet Airways staffers

Mumbai: Air India and its subsidiary Air India Express are in the process of hiring 250 pilots and crew from grounded carrier Jet Airways, a senior executive said on Tuesday.
“Air India Express is hiring close to 50 commanders for its Boeing 737 planes from Jet. We are in talks to hire about 200 cabin crew,” said the executive, adding the crew and pilots would be paid as per AI’s salary levels.
Air India Express operates mostly to neighbouring international cities.
The national carrier follows its peers in nibbling into bits of its financially distressed peer. Jet suspended all its flights on April 17 as it ran out of cash to run operations and failed to raise bank loans. It has close to 70 planes on ground — of which 50 have been deregistered due to non-payment of rentals to plane leasing companies — and more than 18,000 employees left in the lurch.
More than 400 of its unused flight slots are being allocated to other airlines which are also leasing its deregistered planes and hiring its employees. Spice-Jet, for instance, is leasing 40 Boeing 737 planes originally flown by Jet. It has hired close to 1,000 of the airline’s employees, SpiceJet chairman Ajay Singh was cited as saying in a recent media report. Vistara is leasing 10 more; six in May and four in June.
01/05/19 Anirban Chowdhury/Economic Times