Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Days after announcing a nearly USD 80 billion deal for the acquisition of 470 passenger aircraft from the US behemoth Boeing and France’s Airbus SE, in the largest-ever deal in the world’s aviation history, Air India on Friday said it will hire over 4,200 cabin crew trainees, and 900 pilots in 2023 as part of its expansion plans.
It has already announced plans to lease 36 aircraft of which two Boeing 777-200LR have joined the fleet, the media reported.
The cabin crew, to be recruited from across India, will undergo a 15-week program, including extensive classroom and in-flight training at the airline’s training facility in Mumbai as well as familiarisation flights, Air India said.
The airline hired over 1,900 cabin crew between May 2022 and February 2023. More than 1,100 cabin crew have been trained between July 2022 and January 2023, the airline said, adding that in the past three months, approximately 500 cabin crew were cleared for flying.
“With a sizeable aircraft order announced earlier in the month, more flights on international and domestic networks, and re-alignment of domestic routes with AIX connect, cabin crew will play a decisive role in shaping the present and future of the Air India group,” said Sandeep Verma, Air India’s head of inflight services.
The addition of fresh talent will also accelerate the pace of cultural transformation at Air India, which is an integral part of its Vihaan.AI transformation program. “We are also looking to step up hiring of more pilots and maintenance engineers,” he said.
Nearly seven decades after it was nationalized and gradually became economically unviable because of mounting debt and deteriorating services, Air India, well-known for its iconic “Maharaja”, landed back in the hands of its founders, the Tata Group, in January 2022, following an Rs. 18,000 crore deal.
The historic handover marked the end of a long search for a buyer by the government, which spent crores propping up the financially bleeding airline since 2009.