Tata Air India : Blatant discrimination and suspicious recruitment drive

[White Van Driver]

Interested that $5500 is a paltry salary - it's not far off the salary an experienced pilot takes on joining British Airways....

[EladElap]

Will/can foreign pilots employed via recruitment agencies strike?

[Lonewolf_50]

Originally Posted by Magplug

I wonder how much it cost Qatar in bribes to get the Soccer World Cup? Perhaps they should have considered the press fallout before spending their money!

My guess is that they figured that it's a load of noise to be put up with, since once the matches begins all of those other objections tend to get drowned out, just as the sound of jet blast / exhaust will drown out the sound of wind.

Originally Posted by IBMJunkman

As humans age the hair goes gray. That makes it ‘natural’.

As I read through the uniform guidance, I think I understand what they are trying to achieve: a uniform appearance that fits a paticular image that they wish to project. Having spent a career in the military, I understand how uniform regs work, though I will say that they sure dove deep into the details to get the desired 'image' that they are looking for. I wonder if they provide a small allowance for hair dye/coloring in order to allow the grey and silver haired to conform to standards.

[White Sausage]

Originally Posted by jetsreams

That is utter hogwash. Insurance companies have nothing to do with this. Many of the Indian pilots who applied and were selected were highly experienced and type endorsed having flown in other major airlines like Eithad, Jet and Turkish. Yet they were offered a paltry salary of USD 5500/- ( before taxes) which they refused to accept.

Now the Tatas are offering non Indian nationals 4x the pay with 6 weeks on and 2 weeks off through a dubious recruitment firm. Reeks of discrimination and shady dealings

No, it’s not 4 x the pay, it’s 10K and that’s it. For this they will not get experienced AND current (meaning employed) captains, so stop whining. No 777 captain who is presently employed would consider leaving their employer and move to an uncertain future in India with people like you who are waiting to stab them in the back. Especially not for this low salary.

[Pearly White]

Originally Posted by Flying Clog

What The Banjo said.

We all know the stories. Pass the 'Parker pen'.

.

Wait, what? Care to elaborate?

[KRviator]

Originally Posted by Pearly White

Wait, what? Care to elaborate?

When there's thirty pilots all logging VT-BIC on the same day, people get suspicious

Probe into fake pilots scam reveals flying schools fudged logbooksand India revokes licences of 14 'fake pilots' and India may have 4000 'fake' pilots and Indian fake pilot scandal continues to grow. Hell, simply Googling "Indian fake pilot" returns over 22 million results!

And the locals wonder why they want to hire widebody expats? Really?!?

[Flying Clog]

Hit the nail on the head KRviator. Exactly that.

And 10k per month, bloody hell, any self respecting expat long haul captain wouldn't get out of bed for double that.

I mean, India is cheap as chips, sure, and you'd live like a king there on that, but expat captains need to maintain their life/house/commitments, potentially pay tax, back west, so 20-30k would be the figure I would be looking at to drag me over...

But no doubt you'll get some desperados who are unemployable elsewhere to mix it up with the Parker pen brigade. What could possibly go wrong?

[masalama]

From the Economic Times dated 27 November 2022 ,

While the government has said that there is no shortage of pilots in India, it a ..

Read more at:
https://infra.economictimes.indiatim...upply/95805579

The report says there are currently 82 FATA (Expat) pilots as against over 9000 Indian national pilots employed by the airlines in India , that's a figure of less than 1% of the total workforce. Further, these expat pilots are mainly at a few airlines and NSOP's that have types not common in India ( eg. EMB 145/195 & various business jets ) where Indian nationals typed and experienced (examiners, captains etc) are unavailable .
Also, recently the ICAO has significantly boosted India's safety ranking (48'th from 102'nd 4 years ago) and I'm very positive on us doing much better as we all work on the areas that need improvement. Have a read here
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...w/95963096.cms
It's quite clear that a few expats like Flying Clog KRviator etc have an axe to grind with India , maybe they've had a bad taste in their mouths from their previous stints in India but for those wishing to make the move to India , do come and share your experience, knowledge and skills with the growing number of highly motivated young Indian pilots we have but I'd suggest leave all preconceived notions about us & the country behind and make your own experience of our wonderfully diverse country.

masalama ​​​​​​​

[WideScreen]

Whenever I speak with an Indian person, the complaints are always about other Indian people being incompetent, corrupt, fraudulent, or whatever.

All Indian people I did/do encounter in a professional (non-aviation) environment did/do have a high appreciation/ranking of their own capabilities, though from my point of view, it was just pure chaos, incompetence, bureaucratic, accomplishing nothing, mistakes are always somebody else's fault (anybody, Trump ???) and everything needed to be redone by a Western person, to obtain proper result. Across the board.

Having chaos, is a good starting point to create curries, etc. Take care to let it be a hot (in temperature) meal, to avoid personal chaos for the upcoming days.

Nothing personal, no racism, just observation and experience.

[B Fraser]

Originally Posted by masalama

It's quite clear that a few expats like Flying Clog KRviator etc have an axe to grind with India , maybe they've had a bad taste in their mouths from their previous stints in India but for those wishing to make the move to India

Quoting Indian publications that describe the problem doesn't sound like having an axe to grind. The problem extends to neighbouring countries too.

Flight ban due to fake pilots caused PKR 7.9b loss: Pak aviation ministry (aninews.in)

Biman Bangladesh Pilots Recruitment Exam: ACC finds scam | Daily Star (thedailystar.net)

[WhatShortage]

I find very hard to believe that India has that many current proficient and most important, REAL PILOTS to manage the unholy expected growth of the industry.

No one is blaming Indians for being Indians, they are just sick of the CASTA culture and belittling others just because of their surnames/status etc... And that's a FACT. I've seen and being told about Indian captains refusing to embark extracrew just because of: that surname poor people, no no no, not good, not possible. You all know that.

[Dynamite1]

Flying Clog Typically myopic from the boondocks. Unclog rather than strumming the banjo

[Dynamite1]

“I've seen and being told about Indian captains refusing to embark extracrew just because of: that surname poor people, no no no, not good, not possible.”
WhatShortage pl do no propagate such rubbish here. If indeed you have seen ; a serious shortage in perception that. Get real man. It is another matter though; that there seems something fishy with Air India asking for expats. Hopefully that gets corrected.

[jetsreams]

youve hit the nail on the head

[bobdazzle]

Originally Posted by ToCatLady

Perhaps the indian nationals need to look themselves in the mirror and ask WHY their national flag carrier is offering over double salary and lucrative benefits for the "foreigner" to come in and fly.

At least the recruitment firm will know and check the Pilot's licence and hours to be correct for a start!

Yeah. It takes blue eyes and pink nipples to be able to fly airplanes as we know.

[CatFourD]

Interesting thread. My take on the reason for the Offer being discussed: Tatas are being advised by Boston Consulting Group on HR issues. Its going to be a very steep uphill task considering what AI is currently made up of. Carsten Spohr termed these as Cultural Issues and said this is the biggest hurdle between AI and Global Standards. Basically a bunch of Unionised Permanent Staff, a lot of whom have got employment through either the State Policies of upliftment or through Corrupt practices which have been prevalent in all State Organisations for decades. They were ensconced in a World of entitlement with very less oversight and absolutely no accountability and no question of getting Fired unless they literally did something like a hull loss. Being Professional was a choice, not a requirement. How many exercised it correctly is anybody’s guess. With the entire lot from top to bottom being part of the above, they have to do some out of box thinking. The Offer discussed above appears to be part of a very well thought out strategy of infusing thoroughly Professional staff and attempting to bring about a change in the Org Culture. As has been brought out by others, no one in their right mind would want to get into this melee where there is likely hostility from the ensconced unless they are paid for it. Whether it works or not is anybody’s guess. Not an exact analogy but I would liken it to the current attempt by Imran Khan to take on the Powerful and Ensconced Pak Army.

[incredileAI]

"It is highly suspicious that Air India is now embarking on a hiring spree of foreign nationals with benefits that are far in excess of the existing Indian workforce through a recruitment firm. Why were recently selected experienced type rated Indian pilots directly selected from the market not offered the same terms and compensation forcing them to turn down those offers?"
After weeks of the new agreement of T&C been questioning by unions yesterday CEO spread the news 90% of cabin and the majority AI pilots have signed the T&C. Expats are facing bullying from several different directions, DGCA, AI staff, medical etc etc etc.

[Boeingdriver999]

“Blatant discrimination” lol 😂

Gosh. It’s almost like there are a class of humans who are untouchable! However on earth could that be??? In India of all places; the worlds largest democracy - untouchable by other western standards. A paragon of virtue and equity. Perish the thought of any sort of “blatant discrimination”.