This is the second in a series of articles on leadership and HR issues related to aviation and touches upon the background of the pilots in Indian aviation. The next article will focus on the factual position of the DGCA CAR and examine issues that are before the Hon. High Court.

This article also includes extracts from one of my forthcoming books, “An Air Indians Story,” covering a part of the history of Indian aviation, specifically reflecting upon pilot issues up to the current day and the government’s role in creating it.

The History

Aviation in India is synonymous with JRD Tata. It is a less known fact that the Frenchman Henry Pequet began aviation in India on February 18, 1911, from Naini to Allahabad; however, it was JRD who began commercial aviation in India.

The early Tata Airlines had the great JRD Tata himself as the pilot number 1 in India, and it is a matter of pride for every pilot, airline crew, and employee that India’s favourite son was not only a pioneer, a visionary, a benevolent head of industry, but an aviator, and a great one at that too. He gave us civil aviation, and he gave us Air India, a child he built and brought up with his hands.

Pic Courtesy — The Tata Archives

JRD took his first solo flight from Mumbai to Karachi in 1931 and then began his sojourn in air transport. In 1935, Tata Airlines, as it was known then, started its Mumbai to Thiruvananthapuram service, and then later in 1937, it began Mumbai to Delhi flights.

JRD’s ‘Tata airlines’ that was to later become Air India (domestic and international) and his small troop of pilots were personally recruited by him, and Neville Vincent, a former RAF pilot who had at that time actually swayed the mind of Sir Dorabji Tata, then Chairman-Tatas, to invest the royal sum of Rs. 200,000 for JRD to set up the airline. Neville Vincent was the Chief Pilot of Tata Airlines, and they had two other pilots, namely, Homi Bharucha and JRD Tata. Later, Sundaram joined in as the pilot and administrative head.

JRD launched Air India International in 1948, when flying was for royalty and not commoners. Recalling those days, J.R.D. Tata has been quoted as saying that:

“We had no aids whatsoever on the ground or in the air, no radio, no navigational or landing guides of any kind. In fact, we did not even have an aerodrome in Bombay. We used a mud flat at Juhu, which was then a fishing village-beach resort near the city. The sea was below what we called our airfield, and during the monsoon, the runway was below the sea! So, we had to pack up each year, lock, stock, and barrel—two planes, three pilots, and three mechanics—and transfer ourselves to Poona, where we were allowed to use a maidan as an aerodrome, appropriately under the shadow of the Yerwada Jail!” as quoted in Siyasat.

Incidentally, both of those venues are today’s Juhu Flying Club Airfield (Airport) and the Lohegaon Civilian Airport at Pune, which sits within the Air Base.

After the Second World War, Air India became a public company in which the government took a 49% stake at the invitation of JRD. Air India enjoyed great success then because of its great services. While other airlines had to seek expatriate pilots for their fleet, Air India had many Indians who joined their fleet from the forces who had earlier served the RAF and the Royal Indian Air Force in the Wars.

In a few years, India had a booming aviation market with almost 21 airlines and 11 international airlines, and fierce competition had broken out amongst them, bringing into focus the fragile nature of aviation in India.

On August 1, 1953, the parliament adopted the Air Corporations Act, nationalising air transport in India. With that, Air-India and eight other airlines got merged into Air India and Indian Airlines.

The government merged Deccan Airways, Airways India, Bharat Airways, Himalayan Aviation, Kalinga Airlines, Indian National Airways, and Air Services of India, and the domestic wing of Air India merged into one to become the Indian Airlines Corporation, and Air India International became the Air India Corporation for international flights.

The Air Corporations Act 1953 nationalised Indian aviation, and the effect was that no other airlines were allowed to fly and that the two corporations were created to “give effect to the binding directives as issued by the government of India from time to time”.

The Act also stipulated that “the regulations of the employees were statutory in nature” and thus enjoyed special exemptions from some provisions in the country.

India saw wars in 1962, 1965, and 1971 as aviation was fast-growing and expanding. As per the terms of the Air Corporations Act read with the Aircraft Act and Rules, Air India’s aircraft and airmen could be requisitioned if needed to aid the war effort, as a matter of public policy, but fortunately that was not really needed.

The end of the conflicts in the Indian subcontinent brought the Jet Age to Air India, which was the world’s first jet airline. This also meant that many distinguished airmen on short- and long-service commissions were being released for civilian flying. Their skill, expertise, and experience would serve Air India well.

The Indian Air Force released many Airmen to the Air India deputation, and they began flying the 707 and later the 747 Jumbos. Air India had stalwarts like Capt K.M.Mathen, Capt Shirodkar, Capt. Ayodh Kapur, and Capt S.Soman Capt Godbole, Capt C.L.Apte, Capt. Terence Healy , Capt.Brian Sealy, Capt.Pesi Birdi, Capt.C.L.Apte, Capt Azavedo and many others

I was fortunate to have grown up with many of these stalwarts from the Air Force and civilian pilots who later joined Air India in the 1970’s, like Capt. S.C. Mohan, Capt. D.S. Datta, Capt. APC Kapoor, Capt. A.K. Verma, Capt. V.V. Mahesh, Capt. Srivastava, Capt. Tiger Sahai, Capt.Narayan Sastri, Capt. V. Kumar, Capt. J.K. Mitra, Capt. C.R.S. Rao, Capt. A.P.C. Kapoor, Capt. Piloo Patel, Capt. Lalkaka, Capt. Otis D’souza, Capt. P.B Engineer, Capt. S.C. Sharma, Capt. B.S. Gopal, and Capt. Trilokekar, the last two being the only pilots in my memory who were authorised and licenced by the DGCA to simultaneously fly both Boeing and Airbus jets and were check pilots on both at the same time. I was privileged to fly with both of them and almost all of the pilots mentioned above here during my career, bar a few.

On the Indian Airlines side and independent aviators, there were many famous names too, and Indian Aviation is replete with skilled and noted aviators like the Sundarams, Prem Mathur, Rustom Nariman Dastur, Aspy Engineer, Ram Nath Chawla, Prem Mathur, Manmohan Singh, Durba Banerjee, Soudamani Deshmukh, D.Khadtale, and others.

Somewhere in the early 1970s, the government permitted a few pilots to even go on deputation to Singapore Airlines, which had earlier been formed with the split in Malayan Airlines. During the 1930s, British and Imperial Airways formed Malayan Airways and operated in the Malayan regions (Singapore and Malaysia). Later, after Singapore’s independence in 1965, both Malaysia and Singapore acquired the majority of the company jointly in 1966 and changed the name to Malaysia-Singapore Airlines (MSA Airlines)

In 1972, MSA Air split and Singapore Airlines was formed, and its first chairman, J.Y. Pillay, reached out to JRD Tata for assistance. Air India had sent some of its 747 Jumbo pilots on deputation to SIA, who later got absorbed by SIA. Some AI pilots also flew for Air Mauritius on deputation as well (Air India had a minority stake in Air Mauritius in those days and a seat on the board). Air India had in the 1970s even trained the first few batches of Singapore Airlines Air Hostesses at its training facility and Jumbo mock-up at Old Airport Mumbai.

The late 1980s and 1990s brought the end of the oil crisis, the boom of aviation, and soaring demand for pilots. During this time, a few Air India pilots began shifting to Middle Eastern airlines, starting with Gulf Air and Kuwait Airways in the early 1980s and then, in the late 1980s and 1990s, Emirates, Oman, and other Gulf airlines.

The Open Skies policy announced in the early 1990s meant the draft of the Air Corporations repeal act in 1994 and its approval by parliament. In that context, the Government of India retained some protective clauses of the old act in lieu of public interest, but aviation no longer remained the domain of the Government of India alone, as it had been from 1953 to 1994.

While open skies in India in the 1990s brought with it new competition, it also brought a spate of pilot issues, and the war of attrition had begun in the domestic airlines, with some pilots deciding to leave the National Carrier for Mid-Eastern carriers.

A few years later, when a newly formed Air India Express and Sahara Airlines were having a spat over pilots swapping airlines, this problem became more acute since it drew the attention of the MoCA and the DGCA as Air India Express was a fledgling creation of the Ministry of Civil Aviation.

At that point, the DGCA issued a CAR dated September 1, 2005, prohibiting pilots from switching airlines without first serving a mandatory 6-month notice period and obtaining an NOC, failing which their licence could be suspended or terminated. The CAR was challenged by the Society of Indian Pilots (SIP) and the Indian Pilots Guild before the Delhi High Court in a writ petition.

On October 27, 2009, the DGCA issued another CAR in the same series covering the subject of the pilot’s notice period of 6 months, to also stipulate that this was subject to airlines not changing or violating pilot’s service conditions. This CAR, too, was challenged by the Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP) and the Indian Pilots Guild (IPG). The Hon’ble High Court offered some protection to pilots, saying that no coercive action could be taken against them under the clause during the pendency of the Writ Petition.

While the matter was in the High Court, the DGCA came out with a third CAR in 2017, which was also a matter of challenge. The third CAR introduced a clause for a 12-month’ notice period for commanders (Pilot in Command, PIC) while retaining the 6-month notice period for the first officer. These matters are currently being heard by a bench of the Hon. Delhi High Court.

There is no doubt that aviation is a critical transportation industry and is highly capital-intensive, and pilots, engineers, and cabin crew form the essential manpower needed to operate flights. Airlines and investors spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on capital investment, and the same is based on the availability of pilots to run the airline operations. A mass exodus or a concerted action by pilots to switch to another airline could bring any airline to its knees, with aircraft grounded. This brings into focus the twin aspects of the internal HR policies of the airline and suitably remunerative packages for the pilots in tune with market conditions. It is the first criteria that weighs in over the second every single time. However, the bigger question in this conflict that begs to be asked is “Does that give reason for pilots to have such onerous and restrictive employment bonds and tight regulations”?

Let us study the language of the CAR to appreciate:

“1.1 It has been observed that pilots are resigning without providing any notice to the airlines. In some cases, even groups of pilots resign together without notice, and as a result, airlines are forced to cancel their flights at the last minute. Such resignations by the pilots and the resultant cancellation of flights cause inconvenience and harassment to the passengers. Sometimes such an abrupt action on the part of the pilots is in the form of a concerted move, which is tantamount to holding the airlines to ransom and leaving the travelling public stranded. This is a highly undesirable practise and goes against the public interest.

1.2 Such an action on the part of pilots attracts the provisions of sub-rule (2) of rule 39A of the Aircraft Rules, 1937, which read as follows:

“The Central Government may debar a person permanently or temporarily from holding any licence or rating mentioned in rule 38 if, in its opinion, it is necessary to do so in the public interest.”

Provisions of this CAR shall be subject to the outcome of WP(C) 12387/2009 pending before the Hon’ble High Court in Delhi.

This is, if nothing else, a blatant exercise of executive power by the Ministry of Civil Aviation through the Director General of Civil Aviation, and would at some stage be circumscribed by the Courts as being omnibus, overbroad, and reaching far beyond the pale of a regulator’s role, to slip into being a restraint of trade and a violation of fundamental rights. There are many reasons for this view, which will be covered in a subsequent article.

As per the records of the Hon’ble High Court, the arguments advanced by the SIP, FIP and IPG before the High Court focused on the dangers of the particular clause of the CAR and possible cancellation of Pilots licences and focused more around the fact that notice period was the subject matter of contract between the Pilots and the Airlines, but did not appear to press the grounds of the violation of fundamental rights, though they were grounds taken

Even in February 2018, before the division bench of Hon. Justice Shakder of the Delhi High Court, the DGCA had argued that though a few show cause notices were ever issued and licences were never cancelled, the privity of contract lay between the pilot and his airline and their respective service regulations. The only exception was the denial of Capt. Shakti Lumba of Alliance Air, who had applied for VRS from Indian Airlines to join another carrier, which was resisted by the IAC, who wanted him to serve out a notice period, which had just been introduced by the DGCA in the CAR of 2005. Eventually, the court nudged the IAC to grant him the NOC so that he could go on with his career.

The battle lines today between Big Orange Air and its pilots, who had shifted to Big Red Airlines, have made the news for all the wrong reasons and have opened up a can of worms with respect to the restrictive rules and the onerous contracts in the aviation industry today.

It is indisputable that the current battle against the Pilots is actually a proxy battle between Orange Air and Red Air, though both organisations will deny the same. It was not too long ago when Orange was being formed that a number of Big Red pilots jumped ship and resigned, joining Big Orange, and were rumoured to have gotten major signing bonuses, which Big Red could not pay to retain them. Eighteen months down the line, the shoe is now on the other foot, and it is Big Red that is luring pilots into its fold, with bonuses, career progression, and wide-body flying. This has jolted the orange air into action against the pilots.

Before going into the issues or anything related to the CAR, the damage done by the machismo actions of Orange has dented its image badly in the domestic aviation market as employers, placing them on par with airlines such as Mirchi, East West, and Sahara, which were at one time known as the worst places that pilots wanted to work at. It will need a lot of image repair work to do. For an organisation that goes after its employees in this fashion, after some pilots have called it an unhealthy workplace, it is likely to be trusted as much as a family member who sues for partition and sale of the family home when hard times befall the family. The trust quotient of any employer is perhaps the biggest factor that governs the attraction of new talent and the retention of existing talent.

The Big Orange moved the Hon. Delhi High Court in order to ensure that the DGCA took action as per the terms of the CAR of 2017. The DGCA, in turn, stated that they could not intervene in matters of employment. The IPG and FIP argued that the case should not be heard, as they were deliberately not made parties, even though their two writ petitions were earlier in time before the same High Court and where interim orders were in place.

The Hon. High Court did take a view after hearing parties and allowing interventions by the FIP and IPG and stated that DGCA could indeed take action under the CAR for future infractions and also directed all concerned to file their submissions before the Delhi High Court in the main writ petitions. As such, it was not a victory for anyone as much as a loss for the pilots, who, despite having an interim order protecting pilots against any coercive action, had it partially modified without a full, detailed hearing into the merits of their own writ petitions.

Thus, I believe this is round 1, and the battle ground will most certainly shift to an LPA Letters Patent Appeal, and from there to a Special Leave petition. This is an issue that will suck in all the airline operators of India and the regulator and government, who will be called to answer their actions and will have no answer. The success or failure of the pilots will depend on their fractious existence, with multiple bodies wearing multiple hats and pulling in different directions. The 10,000 odd pilots in India rely on all the groups coming together to fight this one, or tough, rich rival airlines will have to come together to ensure their rights are protected.

Either way, its going to be an incredible ride watching how the courts interpret the statute and various enactments made under its umbrella.

We will examine the CAR and the High Court order in the next article, subject, of course, to the limitations of the law, as the matter is sub-judice.