Major airline SpiceJet on Wednesday told its pilots that they will not be given salaries for the months of April and May this year.
However, the pilots who have been flying SpiceJet’s cargo flights during the nationwide lockdown period will get paid on the basis of the time they have flown.
As per reports, the pilots have been revealed about this decision through e-mails by SpiceJet’s flight operations chief Gurcharan Arora.
“We will not be getting any salary for April and May 2020. Those of us who have been flying cargo will get paid for the block hours flown,” he said.
Block hours is the duration of a pilot operating the flight.
Arora also said that 16 per cent of SpiceJet’s aircraft and 20 per cent of its pilots are flying during the nationwide lockdown period.
India has suspended the operations of all commercial passenger flights due to the nationwide lockdown that had been imposed since March 25 in order to curb the coronavirus outbreak.
Civil aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Monday said that flight restrictions will be lifted only when the government is confident that the spread of COVID-19 has been controlled.
Meanwhile, the total number of coronavirus cases in India surged to 31332 on Wednesday.
The death toll due to coronavirus in the country is 1007 so far and the number of active cases is 22629.
A total of 7695 people suffering from coronavirus have either been cured or discharged in the country so far.