Exclusive! Air India management response on engineers' petition

Neelam Mathews

Jan 15, 2012 

The hearing of (erstwhile) Air India engineers that filed a petition 3 months back against the hiving of the engineering subsidiary and Indian Airlines engineers that filed the petition one month back (clubbed together by the Bombay High Court) will be held on Jan 16, AerospaceDiary learns.

Air India management in response to the case filed by its union wrote to the court  -AerospaceDiary has viewed the contents- says: “it is permissible by law for Air India to hive off its MRO business and in any view of the matter the same cannot be the subject matter of judicial review under Article 226 of the Constitution of India…..Further, it is a settled position in law that even if some persons are at disadvantage and suffer losses on account of formulation and implementation of government policy, that is not sufficient for interference by the Court.” It goes on to say: “The survival of Air India is at stake….”

There are some concerns over job cuts as the management’s note hints. 

An engineer told us: “I don't think that our case is very strong. However if this forces the management to come out with proper terms and conditions for our transfer to the MRO, we will be happy. Though IA pilots are given training on B787 by spending a lot of money, no IA engineer has been trained on B787 though no much cost is involved as we don't have a union to demand. Hope the MRO will create a level playing field for both IA & AI engineers.”