Air India will adopt a new rostering system from August to allow its crew to swap flights and even chose accommodation of their choice during layovers. These first Jeppesen-built rosters will go live across the airline’s fleets in August.
In an e-mail shared with the employees Campbell Wilson, chief executive and managing director said: “As the system settles in, the crew should see earlier rosters, better integrity of ‘golden offs and better standby provisioning to reduce last-minute call ups. Also, when averaged over a few months there will also be more equitable earnings.”
Going ahead, some other features like the ability to swap flights, the ability to register flight or layover preference will be progressively rolled out in the remainder of the year.
With more than 500 new crew being recruited, trained and released into service in each of the coming months, Air India hopes to reinstate full crew complements and accelerate training.
“It is a significant investment but one that we feel is worth doing to improve equity amongst crew, more stable work-life balance, better accommodation of preferences as well as better operating robustness and overall efficiency,” Wilson added.
A few months ago, Air India had announced plans to recruit 4,200 cabin crew and 900 pilots in 2023.