I was on a Jet Airways flight from Delhi to Mumbai on Wednesday, the day the airline said it may lay off a further 1,100 employees in addition to the 800 it had retrenched.
Outside the Delhi airport, TV news channel vans had lined up; inside, Jet staff at the counter tried not to meet the sympathetic eyes of passengers. Aboard the aircraft, which had telltale empty seats, newspapers folded into seat pockets had headlines of the layoffs.
I wondered if any of the efficient stewards and stewardesses had been tempted to rip off the covers, or if they were just relieved they were not on probation.
On Thursday, ministers and political parties weighed in on the retrenchments, some calling them illegal, others calling them ill-timed.
Chairman Naresh Goyal, late on Thursday, said he was reinstating the sacked employees because he “could not sleep at night”. The tired protesters cheered.
