Low-cost carrier SpiceJet has announced a hike in salaries for a section of its employees. The airline will pay Rs 7 lakh a month to captains for 80 hours of flying, with effect from November.
The revised salary is higher as compared to the pre-COVID remuneration, the airline said in an official statement
It has also increased the salaries of trainers and Senior First Officers commensurately.
The trainers comprises Designated Examiner (DE), Type Ratings Instructor (TRI) and Line Training Captain (LTC).
The airline has been consistently increasing the base salary of pilots, it said, adding that as compared to August, the September salary saw an increase of up to 10 percent for trainers and 8 percent for captains and first officers.
From October, salaries were hiked by another 22 percent for captains and first officers, it said in the statement.
Last month, the budget carrier had announced a 20 percent salary hike for pilots from October.
Before that a 6 percent hike was announced in August. The Gurugram-headquartered airline received the first tranche of Emergency Credit Line Guarantee Scheme (ECLGS) payment of around Rs 125 crore in September, as per reports.
After the announcement of salary hikes in September, Captain Gurcharan Arora, SVP – Flight Operations, SpiceJet, had said, “Keeping with our commitment of in-creasing salaries in a calibrated manner as our business improves, the salary for the month of October will see an increase of around 20 percent for our captains and senior first officers.”
Days before the salary hikes, the carrier had reportedly asked around 80 pilots to go on leave without pay (LWP) as the airline found itself with ‘excess pilots’.
SpiceJet said the measure, which is in line with the company’s policy of not re-trenching any employee which the airline steadfastly followed even during the Covid pandemic, will help rationalise the pilot strength.
It said that around 40 pilots from the Boeing 737 fleet and another 40 from the Q400 fleet – which the airline operates on regional routes – would be sent on leave without pay for three months, as per ET report.
