Young pilots move court against Air India recruitment process

The young pilots, who have spent millions of rupees in obtaining commercial pilot licences, filed a petition in the court on Friday.

They have alleged that Alliance Air, the low cost wing of Air India, has withheld the results of the job interview they had taken over 10 months ago. The petition is to be heard on Monday.

In their petition, filed through advocate Praneet Ranjan, the pilots alleged that the selection process for trainee pilots is not correct. The pilots had appeared in the airline's selection test and interview in 2008, but were not informed of the results. Instead, the airline put out another advertisement for the same posts in June this year.

The pilots claim the new advertisement is an eyewash and the airline is trying to make backdoor entries of certain pilots from other airlines.

"They (private airline pilots) do not have the required type-rating of the aircraft for which the airline has advertised. They are being recruited and given an opportunity to obtain type-rating certificate of the advertised aircraft at the cost of the airline," the petition stated.

The pilots say that if Air India had told them earlier that it wanted to hire "type-rated pilots" then they would have readily undergone the required training.

The dispute started in April 2008, when Air India invited applications for trainee pilots in Alliance Air. The written test was held on May 25, for which 260 candidates were invited. Of these, 92 were selected and appeared for an interview held in Delhi between Sep 2 and 12.

The pilots allege that none of the 92 were informed of the test results. After the airline advertised again last month to fill up the vacancies, 68 of the pilots approached the court against the airline.