Air India, facing acute shortage of cabin crew which is hurting its on-time performance, is expected to meet the shortfall by July as hiring and training process of new recruits will be over and they will join their active duty.
"The process of hiring an additional cabin crew is underway. We expect that all the selected candidates will complete their training and would join the airline by July," a senior aviation ministry official said.
Air India has currently over 2,500 cabin crew, including the executive officers, to man its fleet of over 100 planes.
The government, which runs Air India, had recently given its approval to an airline's proposal to hire an additional 800 cabin crew to overcome the problem of dwindling numbers.
In the face of cabin crew shortage, the carrier on-time performance (OTP) has gone for a toss with its passengers suffering the most.
With flight delays becoming a norm at the carrier, the government early this month stepped-in and ordered the airline management to deduct salary of those employees who were found responsible for the delay.
"A formula was being worked out, which will determine the quantum of penalty (pay cut) to be imposed on an employee in the eventuality of a flight delay," the official said.
According to passenger traffic data for the month of December, released by the DGCA last month, the national carrier operated only around 60 per cent of its domestic flights on-time from four metro airports in the country against the industry average of 68.88 per cent.
In two of the four metros -- Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad -- it clocked an even poor on-time performance with only 56.9 per cent and 56.7 per cent of its flights from Delhi and Mumbai leaving or arriving on time.
