With the Indian authorities revising norms regarding flight duty timings for pilots, airlines in the country are also making adjustments to meet the new guidelines. Full-service airline Vistara is also looking to increase the number of its pilots by the middle of this year, its CEO recently revealed in an interview.
Vistara is planning to add more pilots in the next few months to comply with the Indian government’s revised rules regarding Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL). Earlier this month, Indian authorities made changes to FDTL in order to curb the growing incidents of pilot fatigue in the country.
According to the new norms, the weekly rest period for flight crew has been increased from 36 hours to 48 hours to ensure “sufficient time for recovery from cumulative fatigue.” Indian airlines are expected to comply with this rule fully by June of this year.
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India’s aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), also mandated that airlines will have to submit quarterly fatigue reports, including the actions taken in such cases. India’s civil aviation minister, Jyotiraditya Scindia, also said that a new risk management method called Fatigue Risk Management System (FRMS) would be rolled out soon. FRMS is a data-driven approach to monitoring crew fatigue.
Indian airlines said that the new duty time limitations would require them to hire more flight crew members, and Vistara is planning to do just that. In an interview with Moneycontrol, the airline’s CEO Vinod Kannan said it plans to increase its pilot strength by 15-20% from the current 800–900 pilots.
Kannan added that Vistara will not be affected much by the new Flight Duty Time Limitations because its operations are not as big as other major airlines, such as the low-cost giant IndiGo. He said,
“We don’t operate so many flights in the midnight hours or the early morning. We do have a few but not as many perhaps as a low-cost airline. It (the number of pilots to be added) is very dependent on the network you have. If you don’t have as many flights in the so-called early morning hours, your impact might be less. So, those are the numbers we are working out. I don’t have the exact figures here.”
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Vistara is currently also in the process of merging operations with Air India – another Tata Group airline – and is busy getting all the necessary approvals this year. The merger is expected to be completed sometime in the middle of 2025.
The issue of pilot fatigue came under the microscope last year when three pilots died within days of one another. Two of them were Indian, and one of them collapsed at the boarding gate before his flight.
The airline has collaborated with the French company Thales Group for this technology.
Since then, the government and airlines have introduced some changes, including the latest revision of rules that will, hopefully, help address this issue effectively.
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