DGCA, airlines should ease pilot fatigue to ensure 100% passenger safety
Post-pandemic, the work-life balance of pilots, especially for a low-fare airline pilot, appears to have worsened.
Way back in 2018, I chronicled the day in the life of a low-fare airline pilot after speaking to many commanders and co-pilots to understand what their jobs entailed daily. The picture I found was grim. Pilots were struggling with burnout and monotony as airlines tried to cope with growing demands without adding more pilots to their payrolls. A low-fare airline commander and crew’s life in India was not one to be envied.
Over the years, things have progressively worsened as the aviation sector has grown and pressure on airlines to improve their bottom lines to stay afloat has mounted. Pilots and commanders of erstwhile Air India, Indian Airlines and Jet led a life of relative leisure, some would say were highly pampered and mollycoddled in comparison to those who entered the industry post-2004.
The pandemic took a significant toll on humanity and like many other professions, several in the aviation sector — commanders, co-pilots and cabin crew — were either laid off or took sharp pay cuts as airlines globally struggled to keep their heads above water. Many airline crew in India contracted and lost their lives to the virus while others suffered the stress of financial setbacks because of dwindled-down incomes. Aviation industry sources in India witnessed numerous instances where those living beyond their means or lavish lives were forced to pare down. Many struggled to pay off loans and make ends meet.
As things limped back to normalcy, some of the financial stress lifted in 2022 and 2023. Yet in some ways, the work-life balance especially for a low-fare airline pilot appears to have worsened. 2023 saw a number of incidents including a few commanders dying while on duty, creating a panicky buzz on social media. Several news reports identified poor health due to overwork, accumulated fatigue and stress, faced by many in the sector, as reasons for the untimely deaths.
In one recent well-known instance, a private airline commander objected publicly to his 156-hour duty timing rosters, of which 94 hours was the flying time (70 hours of flying plus 24 hours of overtime). The commander in question had written to the airline saying that he did not wish to exceed his regular duty hours and didn’t want to do any overtime — regardless of what he earned — as “this kind of flying is beyond my capacity”. The roster included four early morning and six “windows of circadian low” (WOCL) flights, which are between 2 am and 6 am, a time of day when the mind and body are at their lowest functioning capacity.
The untimely deaths highlighted how pilots and crew suffer from excessive fatigue because of the nature of their jobs. This is also a safety issue as the commanders are responsible for the lives of hundreds of passengers while on duty. Coincidentally, such incidents have been on the rise globally, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic. Globally and in India the mental health of pilots too has been under the lens ever since a GermanWings co-pilot deliberately crashed a jet in 2015, killing everyone on board.
Keeping all this in mind, the director general of civil aviation (DGCA) came up with new guidelines in November 2023 limiting the rostering options of airlines by redefining the flight duty timings for late-night flying, ensuring better rest for crew and placing a far higher onus on airline operators to design rosters with the wider aim of lowering the burden on commanders and crew members.
The new rules are likely to put considerable financial and operational strain on the airlines too who always skate on thin ice in trying to ensure the health and safety of the crew while not allowing them to get too complacent. The guidelines were to become operational in June 2024 but this has not yet happened and the matter appears to be in limbo due to a writ petition in the high court.
Many in the industry remain highly sceptical about whether the airlines will allow these guidelines to be implemented at all. Pilots argued that the guidelines were “too good to be true and will not pass muster” since they require the airlines to increase crew numbers. Moreover, the head of operations of the airline is required to maintain and submit fatigue reports on each pilot every quarter and inform the authorities about actions taken.
Crew and airline insiders maintain that the guidelines have been announced as “bait” by DGCA officials to attract the head of operations of each airline to lobby and eventually come up with a set of guidelines more amenable to the interests of the airline.
The DGCA has been plagued by allegations of corruption throughout its history and this reaction speaks volumes for the low credibility of the organisation in the aviation community. Meanwhile, accountability in the case of a mishap, incident or accident due to high-stress levels or poor health of crew members remains a grey area. The constant refrain is that the DGCA — like the airlines — is far more driven by the “commercial considerations of airlines than by safety considerations of passengers”.
The DGCA’s defence on this subject has been that they cannot take such decisions unilaterally and have to accommodate the view of all sides. While this might be true in most other matters, in this particular case, where the pilot’s health and by extension, passenger safety are concerned, the matter is to my mind non-negotiable. It remains to be seen whether DGCA eventually walks its talk or backtracks when faced with pressure from the biggies. Readers should watch this space for more on this.
Anjuli Bhargava is a senior journalist who writes on governance, infrastructure and the social sector. The views expressed are personal
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