In Air India Express standoff, it’s cabin crew 1, Tatas 0

Not only was the Tata group stared down by the protesting cabin crew, it had to eat crow by reinstating staff whose services it had terminated. Is the conglomerate’s storied industrial relations record under threat?

What started as a trickle of cabin crew calling in sick last Monday soon turned into a veritable flood at the Bengaluru base of Air India Express—enough to lead to a disruption of the budget carrier’s flights late Tuesday onwards. The airline management’s attempts at damage control—getting crew at its Kochi and Delhi bases to move to Bengaluru—drew a blank; most of them either declined or called in sick. 

Up to 200 cabin crew, nearly all of them senior (without whom a flight cannot take off), reported sick in what turned out to be the biggest instance of coordinated industrial …