Air traffic controllers's strike averted, for now

A major aviation crisis which threatened to ground all air traffic in India from April 1 was averted late on Monday evening when members of the Air Traffic Controller Guild decided to continue their services to the Airports Authority of India. This solution was arrived at after the AAI agreed to set up a committee to look into the ATCs's grievances.

The 800-odd air traffic controllers in the country were planning to opt out of AAI's employment and discontinue air traffic services from April 1

The three-member committee -- comprising Air-India operations director P C Goel, civil aviation official B Julka and a senior airlines pilot -- is expected to recommend measures to improve the ATCs' career prospects, organisational structure and remuneration scales.

The erstwhile International Airports Authority of India and the National Airports Authority employees who were absorbed into the 1995-formed AAI had been given time till March 31 to decide whether they wanted to accept the terms and conditions offered by the management or not.

The ATCG had found the conditions unsatisfactory and wanted out.

''The management was planning to treat us like any other civil servants," ATCG general secretary Brijendra Shekhar told Rediff On The NeT in a telephonic interview from his office in Delhi."They have only brought out part of the policies, and the air traffic controllers hardly found any mention in it."

The guild has demanded conditions at par with those specified by the Montreal-based International Civil Aviation Organisation. ''We are not asking that the ICAO specifications be introduced here verbatim. It is obvious that the AAI cannot pay us at par with what ATCs get abroad. But they surely can introduce the same payscale ratio between a pilot and ATC here," says Shekhar.

It is such things that the committee, which has been given a three-month deadline, will look into.