Incentives for AI top brass restored

The government on Tuesday restored the payment of productivity-linked incentives (PLI) to Air India's functional directors, five months after stopping it.

With losses mounting, the Air India Board had approved a cut of up to 50 per cent in the monthly PLI for the airline's executive directors and other functional directors in September last year, as part of cost-cutting measures.

Official sources confirmed that the Civil Aviation Ministry on Tuesday wrote a letter to the Air India management directing it to restore the PLI payments to its functional directors.

The cuts were proposed in brackets of 25 per cent for those who got PLI of Rs 10,000 or less, 35 per cent for those between Rs 10,001 and Rs 25,000, 40 per cent for those between Rs 25,001 and Rs 50,000 and a maximum cut of 50 per cent for those who get an incentive of above Rs 2 lakh.

However, the cut barring that on the top executives, was put on hold after executive pilots went on five-day no-work agitation which led to large-scale disruption of flights.

As a result of the pilots' agitation, the national carrier lost an estimated Rs 65 crore (Rs 650 million) in those five days. In 2008-09, the airline losses had doubled to Rs 5548 crore (Rs 55.48 billion).