Battling Pilot Fatigue: DGCA Push For Increased Rest Hours Is A Right Step Forward

The changes are being proposed at a time when two young pilots have recently died of cardiac arrest. On November 16, 37-year-old Captain Himanil Kumar was returning from the Diwali break for his scheduled training session to transition to fly another type of aircraft. Kumar suffered a cardiac arrest at the Delhi airport and was declared dead when taken to a nearby private hospital. The Economic Times quoted a senior DGCA official saying, “All his past medical assessments were fine with no underlying medical conditions.”

Kumar’s death came close on the heels of the death of another pilot in August, 40-year-old Manoj Subramanyam who died in similar conditions just minutes before his flight in Nagpur. These deaths bring home the reality of pilot fatigue in the aviation industry. And luckily for the passengers in the Nagpur flight, the pilot's death did not happen when they were airborne.

German data gathering website Statista says India had 270.34 million domestic passengers and 56.94 million international passengers in financial year 2023. Some 10 million short of the numbers in FY 2019 before the Coronavirus landed, the increasing number of passengers points to the airline industry recovering from the doldrum of the Covid times.

The airlines, however, have not left Covid crisis-mode leading to questions about the pilots' roster system and the fatigue inflicted upon pilots as a result. At the core of this practice are the layoffs necessitated by the damage to the airlines' balance sheets.

In April this year, the Indian Commercial Pilots’ Association (ICPA), a commercial pilots’ body, had written to Air India, demanding their grievances against the roster system be redressed. The ICPA had flagged how rosters were being amended with nil or short notice to the flight crew and ending up affecting their health.

Apart from the DGCA proposals, airlines have been using tools in their roster system to curb fatigue among pilots. When The Secretariat wrote to Air India and Indigo for their views on the FDTL draft, Air India said, “We’ll adhere to the FDTL norms laid out by DGCA.” The carrier didn't respond to a specific query on how it would affect their operations once the draft norms are implemented. Indigo has not reverted to the queries.

“It (DGCA’s FDTL draft) is a good proposal and we need to see what will come of it,” Captain JJ Nijhawan, a member of the Indian Pilots Guild, told The Secretariat.

What The DGCA Draft Says

The draft has proposed that a pilot flying at night fulfil a maximum flight duty period of 10 hours instead of the existing 13. The draft seeks to increase the minimum weekly rest period to 48 hours from 36 hours. The existing FDTL rules do not differentiate between night and day flights, and allow pilots to be deployed on duty for 13 hours in a 24-hour span. Imagine flying for 13 hours! The introduction of these measures, which is up for public consultation among stakeholders, will introduce a gap in the working schedule of airlines, which would need to be filled with new pilots.

The DGCA draft demands airlines to use fatigue reports as a tool to lower crew fatigue and directs each airline to establish a clear policy on fatigue reports. The DGCA has directed the policy should state not only on "how to raise" a report but also "what to do" in case of a fatigue report. Executive responsibility for addressing fatigue management shall be defined by the airlines.

Other guidelines proposed in the FDTL draft include enforcing airlines to preserve all fatigue reports and action taken reports for a minimum six months, which need to be made available to the DGCA when required. It also mandates the head of operations to submit a quarterly report of the fatigue and action taken reports.

What When There Are More Aircraft ...

With India's two main airlines, Indigo and the Tata-owned Air India, placing substantial orders for new planes, the DGCA draft can turn out be a blessing not only for the flight crew but also for other job seekers in the aviation industry. The duopoly has also seen a significant surge in airfare, making air traffic a much more expensive proposition.

Earlier this year, Air India placed an order for 470 planes with Airbus and Boeing due by 2025. Similarly, Indigo placed an order with Airbus for 500 narrow-body planes, which are to be delivered by 2030-2035.

The DGCA proposal, cutting down the number of night flight duty hours and increasing weekly rest hours, will likely leave airlines short of pilots and crew. This would make hiring impossible to escape but how the airlines manage this with minimal impact on their balance sheet will be worth watching. The draft, read with the orders for new aircraft, may see the aviation sector hiring more flight crew staff in the next 5-10 years.

But not everyone sees it in that light. “The DGCA draft will leave a void in the operations of airlines since pilots are already made to do the maximum number of hours of flying by their employers. If the draft comes into effect, I believe that airlines would face difficulty in coping and, as a result, there will be flight cancellations. That said, I believe that it is absolutely much needed to deal with the fatigue,” said a pilot, who chose to remain anonymous.

On another front, the DGCA draft gently answers the social media furore caused by Infosys founder NR Narayana Murthy's remark for the 70-hour week.