Air India is currently undergoing all kinds of changes, as the airline has been privatized, and is trying to reinvent itself. Most of these changes have been positive, though there’s one development that’s leaving the company’s employees pretty unhappy…
Air India’s new flight attendant layover hotel policy
With Vistara being merged into the Air India brand, the airline is working on developing new, unified policies for flight attendants. This involves everything ranging from travel benefits, to layover entitlements, to workplace wellness reimbursement.
There’s one proposed change that’s raising the most eyebrows though — Air India wants flight attendants to start sharing hotel rooms on layover. The proposal is that this policy would be implemented as of December 1, 2024, and with this, cabin crew and cabin seniors would share rooms on layovers, while cabin managers and cabin executives would get their own rooms.
Now, the proposed layover policy changes aren’t entirely negative. For example, the proposal is that the layover allowance on international trips would be increased from $75-125 per night, to $85-135 per night. Furthermore, on domestic trips, crews would go from only having breakfast included, to having all meals included.
Crews sharing hotel rooms on layovers crosses the line
There’s no denying that Air India is bucking the industry trend by proposing that flight attendants share hotel rooms on layovers.
On the one hand, I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more often (at least at airlines without strong unions), given that the cost savings are potentially significant, and many airlines like to see what they can get away with.
On the other hand, there’s a reason you don’t find this policy at more airlines, and it’s because it’s unreasonable, plain and simple. Being a flight attendant is exhausting, and it’s important that flight attendants get proper rest during layovers, especially given some of the ultra long haul flights that Air India operates.
Sharing a hotel room poses a couple of issues:
- It’s kind of awkward to just constantly share a room with a stranger, since most of the time you won’t even know the people you’re flying with
- Different people deal with jet lag and rest in different ways, so not everyone will have the same sleeping and rest patterns
For the sake of Air India flight attendants, I hope this policy isn’t implemented. I’m happy to see Air India investing in improvements, but that also needs to include investing in employees, and at least giving them the opportunity to have a private room on layovers.
Bottom line
As of December 2024, Air India intends to change its layover policy for flight attendants, whereby they’d have to share hotel rooms on layovers. The industry standard is very much that flight attendants get their own hotel room, given the different schedules that crew members are on. So while I can appreciate that Air India probably views this as a money saving opportunity, I think this will have a negative impact on morale.
What do you make of Air India’s proposed hotel room policy for flight attendants?
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