Air India makes voluntary retirement offer for non flying-staff

Air India, a Star Alliance member, announced a voluntary retirement offer on Friday, 17 March for its non-flying staff. This is the second such offer made by the company after it launched the first phase of the voluntary retirement offer in June 2022.

In the first phase of the voluntary retirement offer, both flying and non-flying staff were covered. At that time, around 4,200 employees were eligible and out of them, around 1,500 people opted for the offer, PTI reported citing sources.

There has been a request from employees for extending the additional benefit of voluntary retirement to other permanent employees as well. In response to this, Air India is announcing the second phase of the voluntary retirement offer, the airline's Chief Human Resources Suresh Dutt Tripathi said in the communication sent out to the staff today.

As per a PTI report, around 2,100 employees will be eligible to avail the latest voluntary retirement offer. Air India has currently 11,000 employees including flying and non-flying staff.

The offer is only open to permanent general cadre officers who have served the airline for at least five years continuously and are above the age of 40. Also, employees in the administrative and unskilled categories who have served continuously for at least five years are eligible, according to an internal document.

The employees who apply for voluntary retirement from March 17 to April 30, 2023 will also be provided with an ex-gratia amount as a one-time benefit. Eligible employees who apply up to March 31 will receive Rs 1 lakh over and above the ex-gratia amount.

This comes just after three days when Air India announced the collaboration with Salesforce to transform its customer service technology stack. Through their work with Salesforce, Air India will be able to optimise the customer experience across all key touchpoints - online, on the ground and in the air.