Challenging the decision of Air India management to draw equal number of pilots from the erstwhile Air India and Indian Airlines for training for the new Boeing 787, theIndian Pilots Guild (IPG) has approached the Bombay High Court seeking stay on the decision.

The petition has sought a stay on the October 20 schedule issued by Air India for proposed slots for training of pilots for the Boeing 787 aircraft which would be inducted in its fleet over the next few months.

According to IPG which represents erstwhile Air India pilots, such a schedule goes against the agreement it had reached with the management earlier. 

According to the petitioner's counsel Jamshed Mistry, such a policy, which requires assigning flight duty on a Boeing 787 aircraft to one pilot each from Air India and erstwhile Indian Airlines, is "arbitrary" and "contrary to the agreements".

The petition states that in September and October 2011, in a series of meetings, IPG was verbally conveyed that the central government desired that the flight crew requirement be met with pilots of both IA and AI on a 1:1 basis.

"However, IPG representatives informed the Chairman and Managing Director of Air India that this would be in violation of the Wage Agreement dated December 22, 2006," the petition stated.

The IPG has contended the experience of Indian Airlines pilots is far less than that of the Air India pilots and has sought that the 1:1 policy should not be implemented and only Air India pilots should be assigned duty on these new advanced aircraft.

The training of the first batch of pilots of Indian Airlines is scheduled to commence on November 3.

A division bench of Justices Roshan Dalvi and Amjad Sayed has posted the matter for hearing tomorrow.

PTI