Pilot Flying Schedules Are Compromising Safety Of Passengers!

Did you know? Pilots are hired on a minimum hour contract, which means, every month they get paid for the number of hours they are on the flight and if they fly above that they get an overtime bonus.

In India, pilots have to follow a very rigid and tight schedule. According to a news article published by the Financial Express, here’s what a pilot’s schedule on an Indian Carrier looks like –

• The pilot starts his day by flying from Delhi at 8.15 a.m. for Amritsar and lands there by 9.30 a.m.
• The pilot then takes off from Amritsar at 10.10 a.m. for Delhi and lands at 11.30 a.m.
• After a short break, the pilot takes off for Bangkok from Delhi at 1.55 p.m. and lands in Bangkok at 6.25 p.m. (IST)
• Next day, the pilot takes off from Bangkok at 1.45 p.m. and lands in Mumbai at 6.25 p.m.
• The pilot again takes off from Mumbai for Chennai at 8.50 p.m. and lands there at 10.55 p.m.
• Next day, the pilot finally flies back to his home base, Delhi, at 6.20 p.m. and lands there at 9.15 p.m.

It is over this nature of the scheduling that the pilot fraternity has locked horns with the management teams of airlines, saying they are fatigued. They complain that airlines are extracting more work out of them as they expand their fleet, without recruiting enough new pilots.

The problem with scheduling of a pilot’s flight is that even though it is within the Flight Duty Time Limitation(FDTL) and the pilot gets the rest period allowed the airlines have found a way around the limitations.

Airlines in India are allowed ‘exemptions’ to the Aircraft Rules of 1937 and Civil Aviation Requirement(CAR). This allows them to manipulate it for maximum duty hours and minimum rest period for pilots. They use variations to increase the duty hours as well. The country’s civil aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has allowed airlines to use this as an operating norm.

A Delhi High Court order which was released on April 18^th, asked the airlines and the DGCA to stop this practice. The Court cited five recent incidents that have resulted in both losses of life and aircraft, because of pilot fatigue from constant flying. The court added that the practice is driven by a profit motive and airlines are endangering people’s lives.

According to experts and professionals, this problem is caused by rapid growth in air traffic in India. It has been the highest in the world for the past five years and continues to rise. Airlines in India are falling short of the acceptable pilot-to-aircraft ratio.

It isn’t just flying time that is causing fatigue among pilots. Here are some other factors that contribute to a pilot’s fatigue –

• One reason is the amount of time a pilot has to sit at the airport waiting or the amount of time he takes to exit an airport post flight, which are both not counted as his duty hours.
• The second reason is Dead-Heading, a term used by IndiGo airlines which essentially means, the travel a pilot has to do to report for flight duty which is not located at the home base of the pilot.

Pilot fatigue has been an issue for a long time with both airlines and pilots agreeing that fatigue is an issue posing a very troubling threat to millions of passengers as well as valuable cargo supplies that are carried by air transport each day. Here’s are a few examples –

• Exhaustion in the cockpit can be deadly. In 2009 an American commuter plane crashed taking the lives of everyone on board. The incident occurred when the pilot took a nap and the autopilot system failed.
• 16 people were injured on an Air Canada flight as a result of pilot fatigue. The co-pilot woke up disorientated from a nap believing that the planet Venus was an airplane and that their aircraft was going to collide with it. In order to avoid the imaginary aircraft, he put the jet into a dive, injuring passengers in the cabin.

We can only hope that airlines take this issue seriously and not overwork pilots for increasing their profits.