New duty-hour rules evoke mixed response.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) will monitor flight duty records of pilots to ensure that the crew gets adequate rest between each flights. In its new rules on duty hours and rest period for pilots issued on Thursday, the regulator has proposed online monitoring of the records.
The rules on ‘Flight and Duty Time Limitation’ specify how many hours a pilot can fly in a day and what should be the minimum rest period between two flights. The duty hours vary for domestic and international operations and depend on the number of crew, time zones crossed and the time of day and night when an aircraft is flown.
The regulator has instructed airlines to maintain computerised records of flight duties with a link to the DGCA office. “Further, the system shall have a provision of audit trail so that the change made in the data can be tracked to its source,” the rules stated. The new rules will come into effect from February 2012.
Pilots have welcomed this initiative by the regulator to monitor records. “It is the airline’s responsibility to ensure that the crew’s flight duty times are not violated. In a sense it is like self-censorship. Pilots are bound to follow the rules but airlines pressurise them to operate more hours over the prescribed limit. Currently, airlines are required to submit data in case pilots have flown in excess of mandatory hours or DGCA conducts random checks. However, now it will have direct access to airline records and will monitor it better,” a senior commander from a private airline said. Also, the data will prevent tampering of duty hour records.
At present, pilots’ work hours are governed by rules framed in 1992. In 2007, DGCA issued rules which provided more rest period to pilots but the regulator put the rules on hold following pressure from airlines. The Society for Welfare of Indian Pilots challenged the DGCA decision in the Supreme Court which has upheld DGCA’s decision to stay 2007 rules.
DGCA has incorporated the impact of Window of Circadian Low (time between 0200-6000 hours) while stipulating duty hours. Research indicates that human body performance and alertness is at lowest during that period. The new rules limit the flight duty hours when a flight is operated during the hours. Another change is inclusion of travel time for positioning purposes as duty time. Often pilots fly as passengers in order to onward or return flights and currently that travel time is not considered as duty.
The new rules evoked mixed reaction among pilots. “It is a step forward but a lot needs to be desired. It looks like DGCA has just done some cosmetic changes,” another pilot remarked. Pilot unions are expected to dissent some of the proposals in the new rules. ”The number of hours a pilot can fly in a week has been increased from 30 to 35 hours. Also, the number of hours a pilot can fly in a month and year has been retained at 125 and 1,000 hours respectively. Also pilots from state-run Air India and private carrier Jet Airways were demanding that the 10-hour flight time for two crew international operations be revised. In the 1992 rules, the duty time was fixed at nine hours but DGCA gave a dispensation and allowed the airlines to increase it to 10 hours. This has not been changed,” the commander said.
