Country’s national carrier, Air India, had asked its top management and senior officials to voluntarily forego their salary and productivity-linked incentives for July to help the cash-strapped and crisis-ridden airline.

A statement issued by the state-owned carrier said: “As a gesture to ease the liquidity crunch faced by the airline, Mr Jadhav has requested all executives in the level of General Managers and above to voluntarily forego salary and Productivity Linked Incentive (PLI) payable in the month of July 2009.”

Jadhav's request is pertinent to all senior employees of Air India, its subsidiaries and those on deputation and on contract.

The national carrier is facing a possible industrial turmoil with employees bullying confrontation in case their June salary is not given by this month-end.

In order to sort out the employee grievances, the AI management has decided to hold a meeting with the employees union in Delhi today.

“The NACIL management has called us for a meeting in New Delhi tomorrow,” Aviation Industry Employees Guild general secretary George Abraham said.

The airline company is said to be seeking Rs 14,000 crore, including Rs 7,000 crore as a soft loan from the goverment.

Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel has also made it clear that a government bailout for AI was being considered very actively.

Experts do believe that the domestic air travel in India fell by 15% in April from a year earlier, the 11th consecutive monthly decline.

It should be noted here that, in the recent past, international carrier, British Airways had also asked its employees to forgo their June salaries.