Pilots in India plead for better compensation for colleagues who died of Covid.

Amitesh Prasad, a pilot with Air India, came down with Covid-like symptoms in April this year after he flew from San Francisco to the southern Indian city of Bengaluru. He was among the many pilots who had worked on one of India’s largest humanitarian missions to bring home stranded residents and transport essential pandemic-related supplies. He died on May 9, one of at least 17 pilots in India who have died of the coronavirus, according to the Indian Pilots’ Guild, a union of about 350 pilots in the country. Almost half of them flew with Air India and the rest with private airlines, including Indigo, Go Air and Vistara, it said. The Air India pilots had their salaries reduced during the pandemic, their union says, and it points out that many of them came to India’s aid when people and vaccines needed to be transported, even though they were not vaccinated themselves. Now, the country’s pilots, especially those working for Air India, the debt-ridden airline controlled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, are asking for better compensation for the families of airline crew members who die of Covid. On Monday, the Federation of Indian Pilots, a pan-India organization of pilots, filed a public interest lawsuit in the Bombay High Court, seeking better compensation, insurance benefits and vaccination for all airline crew members. The federation said in its petition that as of February this year, nearly 2,000 Air India staff members had tested positive for Covid-19. More than 500 of them required hospitalization. “However, there is no scheme for adequate compensation to pilots in case of their demise,” the federation said. It added that “there is no insurance scheme or any other such scheme providing safety net to the pilots.”<br/>