Question : Appointment of Consultants by Air India

(a) whether Air India has re-appointed retired managers as consultants;

(b) if so, the details thereof including the total number of such appointments made along with the reasons therefor;

(c) whether Air India is facing shortage of engineers, if so, the details thereof and the steps taken to fill the vacancies; and

(d) whether Air India has re-appointed retired hands to meet the shortage of engineers and if so, the details thereof and the reasons for appointing retired hands instead of making fresh recruitments?

Minister of State in the Ministry of CIVIL AVIATION

(Shri Jayant Sinha)

(a) & (b) : Yes, Madam. At present, 247 superannuated employees of Air India have been engaged as Consultant as there has been no induction of non-operating manpower in Air India for more than last 15 years. These consultants have been engaged for a period of one to two years in order to meet the immediate requirement of trained/experienced manpower in respective Departments to ensure smooth functioning.;
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(c) : There is acute shortage in AIESL to contain even the in-house (i.e Air India) workload besides the third party workload at different base / station. Further, substantial number of retirements of engineers took place during this time. Also, the utilization of the aircrafts has been enhanced compared to past times. Hence, the combined effect contributed to acute shortage of skilled engineers.

The steps taken by Air India Engineering Services Limited to fill the vacancies are:

i) Recruitment of Aircraft Maintenance Engineers, Support Service Engineers and Service Engineers from the qualified personnel within the Company.

ii) Recruitment of Aircraft Maintenance Engineers, Support Service Engineers and Service Engineers from open market.

iii) Reappointing the retired qualified Engineering personnel on contract basis.;
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(d): Air India Engineering Services Limited is reappointing the retired personnel as an interim measure. Till date, AIESL has appointed 209 retired staff (Airbus group 114 and 95 in Boeing group). On the other hand, the fresh recruitment is also going on. The gestation period for fresh recruits is 3 to 4 years to become full-fledged Aircraft Maintenance Engineer under DGCA CAR 145. Hence, it has been decided to take the retired personnel who are already licenced by DGCA to mitigate the immediate shortage.