Infighting among pilots might impact Air India's 787 flights

The issue of mixing pilots from Air India and the erstwhile Indian Airlines (IA) on a flight has been a hot potato for the AI management, on which it will have to soon take a bite, as it prepares to launch the Delhi-Sydney schedule later this month.

The cabin  crew, operations and engineering departments of the airline are still divided on the lines of narrow body (IA) and wide body (AI) planes. AI will use its latest Boeing 787 on the Delhi-Sydney-Melbourne route. At present, the Boeing 787 is used on the London, Paris, Frankfurt, Birmingham and domestic routes. Pilots of both AI and the erstwhile IA fly the aircraft but never together.

The only exception is training and IA pilots have trained in simulators and done training flights under wide body plane captains. Here, too, there have been problems and IA captains have refused to fly with three AI instructors.

Till now, crew rostering managers have avoided mixing pilots from both sides, as issues like a common pay scale and common seniority have not been resolved. Fears have been raised that mixing pilots from the two fleets without solving merger-related issues like pay scale or seniority will create crew resource management (CRM) problems and affect flight safety.

The Indian Commercial Pilots Association which represents the IA pilots has taken a stand that the merger-related issues must be addressed  before deploying AI and IA pilots on a single flight. However, the higher crew requirement on the Delhi-Australia route might require such mixing. So far, no decision has been taken. While two pilots (a captain and a first officer) are required for the European and domestic flights, four (two captains and two first officers) will be required for the Delhi-Sydney flight, which has a duration of a little over 12 hours. Further, another two pilots will be required for Sydney-Melbourne and four for the return flight to India.

Sources said the higher crew requirement might make it difficult for the operations department to use pilots only from AI or IA for a particular flight.

"It is creating an artificial shortage of pilots," a senior commander remarked. The airline has 58 sets of  pilots from both the fleets trained on the Boeing 787. A set includes a captain and first officer.

Air India spokesperson did not comment on the issue.

Capt Rajat Rana, general secretary of ICPA said "We are mid way through the merger and we want it to be completed quickly. There are many issues still pending and finally the company has started addressing and forming common policies/rules and treating both sides as one cadre."

"Individually some pilots from both sides had reservations about flying with each other, but now on request from the company we have started training with them, thereby reducing financial burden on the company. We are co-operating with the management and have no objections if erstwhile AI pilots are sent to fly on the erstwhile IA fleet. We have been told that cockpit crew of both erstwhile AI and erstwhile IA will fly separately (except training flights) till the entire merger process is complete and we are hopeful that then issues like CRM training, Seniority will be addressed for the same, which is also the standard industry norm.

Sufficient number of pilots have been trained from both the fleets for 787 operation. There is a very remote requirement of cockpit crews of erstwhile AI and erstwhile IA to fly together for Australia or other flights as of now. We feel this is non issue," he added.