Pawan Hans begins crackdown on pilots

MUMBAI, Dec 14: The Pawan Hans Helicopter Corporation has begun to crack down on its pilots who have refused to operate flights to Oil and ...

MUMBAI, Dec 14: The Pawan Hans Helicopter Corporation has begun to crack down on its pilots who have refused to operate flights to Oil and Natural Gas Commission’s Bombay High off-shore rigs since November 27. Last week, the company began terminating services of its contract pilots aligned to the Pawan Hans Pilots Guild who are on strike along with the regular pilots.

“Pilots have been given cheques for two months’ salary in lieu of notice,” said a Pawan Hans source. There are nearly ten pilots on contract with Pawan Hans who fly Dauphins at Bombay High.

Senior officials of ONGC which partly owns Pawan Hans have sought the intervention of officials from the Ministry of Civil Aviation to resolve the crisis .

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The pilots are demanding suspension of senior Pawan Hans officials, general manager (operations) P S Sood and deputy general manager (personnel) A K Shrivastava as a pre-condition for talks. The pilots accused the two senior officials of complicity in an incident on November 26-27 when the company’s general category employees gheraoed and threatened to assault them.

Police were subsequently called in to rescue the pilots. G S Hundal, CEO, Pawan Hans, who has ordered an enquiry into the incident however said the two officials will not be suspended. Executive pilots of the company who were operating the Pawan Hans fleet initially have also joined the stir.

Now, Pawan Hans has decided to recruit pilots from the open market. But this has proved difficult as the handful of pilots trained on Dauphin helicopters are already employed elsewhere.