Kingfisher fixes allowance to check attrition

The UB Group's Kingfisher Airlines has fixed the monthly flying allowance of its pilots at 70 hours.

The allowance is around 40 per cent of a pilot's salary. Till now in Kingfisher, the number was not fixed and depended on the number of hours flown.

"Many of our pilots had left the airline because of the non-fixed flying allowance structure," said an airline executive, who did not want to be identified.

An airline spokesperson did not respond to text message and email. Kingfisher had seen 100 pilots resigning in the past 18 months.

Budget carrier IndiGo is reported to have hired 35 of their pilots over the past eight months.

A pilot said the earlier concept was depressing.

"Even if I went on training for a month, my flying allowance would not come because I could not fly any Kingfisher commercial flight. This was a weird norm, as training was part of my job and not a personal thing," he said.

The airline is in a financial crisis and has defaulted on payments to oil marketing companies and airport operators, among others.

Hindustan Petroleum Corporation recently stopped fuel supply to the airline for a few hours after the dues had touched Rs. 650 crore  (Rs. 6.5 billion), of which Rs. 170 crore (Rs. 1.70 billion) was not covered by any guarantee.

The airline was also recently threatened by GMR, which operates the Delhi and Hyderabad airports, that it would put it on a cash-and-carry system, after the airline's dues touched Rs. 90 crore [Rs. 900 million] (Rs. 68 crore [Rs. 680 million] for Delhi and Rs. 22 crore [Rs. 220 million] for Hyderabad).

Kingfisher Airlines is the only listed carrier to have not turned profitable in the last financial year.

It ended 2010-11 with a loss of Rs. 1,027 crore (Rs. 10.27 billion).

The airline also increased its losses in the first quarter of the current financial year to Rs. 263 crore (Rs. 2.63 billion) from Rs. 187 crore (Rs. 1.87 billion) during the same period last year.

It has restructured Rs. 7,000 crore (Rs. 70 billion) of debt with banks' approval.

The package included conversion of about 30 per cent of the debt by banks into capital and a loan of Rs. 735 crore (Rs. 7.35 billion) from parent company UB Holdings into equity.