Flogging a dead horse

The rest periods of pilots have been reduced from what is mentioned in the civil aviation requirement rules

After a continuing battle over increased notice periods – a matter yet to be resolved - pilots in the country are locked in a new battle with the director general of civil aviation (DGCA) and airlines. This time the issue is pilot fatigue and stress, a matter they say is slowly but surely becoming a safety hazard.

 
The matter has now reached a stage where the president of the Airline Pilot Association of India (ALPA) Sam Thomas is filing an affidavit in court on behalf of the pilots, asking why DGCA is permitting such dispensations to carriers. The affidavit will be filed later this week. ALPA currently has just over 1000 members but is soon opening up membership to bring more pilots into its cohort.
 
Among the airlines, Jet airways and Air India seem to be among the worst offenders. Faced with a crunch of senior commanders and cabin crew, both the airlines have sought dispensations from the regular flight timings duty limit (FTDL) guidelines which vary substantially from what DGCA guidelines stipulate. Rest periods for pilots have been vastly reduced from what is mentioned in the civil aviation requirement (CAR) rules. To cite one instance if a pilot crosses between 3-7 time zones, he is entitled to 36 hours of rest, including two local nights.
However, both Air India and Jet airways have reduced the rest period to 20 hours for a pilot who crosses 3-7 time zones and he gets only one local night. In the case of Jet airways, there is no limit to how many reduced rest flights can happen in a week, making matters worse. Moreover, the definition of night and day varies from airline to airline. Although the FTDA defines night as between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m., Air India has reduced the definition to midnight to 8 a.m. while Jet airways has taken things a step further and defined night as midnight to 5 a.m. For Jet airways, nights at five hours are incredibly short!” argues Thomas.
In order to reduce crew requirements on flights (as a result of which pressure on the crew that is operating goes up), airlines are showing a higher planned speed of flying to show that the flying time is lower and hence arguing for a lesser crew requirement. If the flying timing is over 9 hours and 30 minutes, a flight is supposed to have an augmented crew operating. But by showing the flight time as lower on paper with a increased speed, airlines reduce the crew deployed.
Airlines are also allowing operations during the period of 2 a.m-5 a.m. (a special term defines this timing which is when the brain functioning is at its lowest) for two consecutive nights for international sectors. “This is again a huge safety risk”, adds Thomas.
 
Pilots say this entire issue of pilot fatigue and duty timings is not new in the Indian airspace. The DGCA’s approach to pilot fatigue has always been “quite lax”, say senior commanders. Till some years ago, pilot duty timings were not considered whatsoever. Although draft FTDL had been eventually drawn up in July 2007, they were not notified till a disaster occurred. It was only after the May 2010 Air Indian Express air crash in Mangalore that DGCA began to take cognizance of pilot fatigue at all and it is in the aftermath of that crash (the pilot was suspected to be asleep and snoring was heard over the cockpit voice recorder once recovered) that the new flight timing duty limits were set in motion and notified.
 
LCC pilots too face fatigue and have a stressful job as they do many landings and take offs in a day and aircraft turnaround times are very short.

 
Pilots argue that they have been considered “machines” by officials – much like the aircraft they commander. “Often DGCA officials tend to argue that pilots are well paid and so they ought not to complain no matter what, refusing to accept that those who are paid well can also be tired”, says a senior Air India commander.