New Delhi: In an attempt to improve its image further, national carrier Air India has taken steps to cut salaries of its personnel, who are found to be causing flight delays.

The staff who would be affected by this move includes cabin crew, pilots, engineers or ground handling personnel, who report late for work thereby causing flight delays leading to monetary losses to the airline.

The losses will be recovered by deducting the requisite amount from the salaries of the erring staff.

However, Air India is being hit not just by flight delays alone. On Saturday evening, in a serious incident that has a bearing on air-safety, an Air India flight from Delhi to Muscat — that had taken off from Delhi — had to return within a short while after the landing gear of the aircraft failed to retract.

A suspected computer glitch may have led to the autopilot tripping but the pilot saved the day by manually operating the aircraft and landing it back in Delhi safely.

So far as the salary-cut against those personnel found guilty of causing flight delays is concerned, Air India issued a circular, which will come into effect from Sunday.

The move has, however, caused concern among a section of employees, who feel that they may be now under pressure to perform tasks quickly, especially complicated and meticulous tasks such as engineers giving aircraft clearance to fly. Airline officials, however, dismissed these concerns, saying the airline was only enforcing discipline and that this would not affect flight safety in any way.