The Indian Director General of Civil Aviation through a notice published on its website
www.dgca.nic.in has announced a decision by the Ministry of Civil Aviation to keep a Civil Aviation Requirement (CAR) governing pilots’ Flight Duty Time Limitations “in abeyance”. This C.A.R was introduced in August 2007- despite protests from airline managers stating that some pilots were going to be granted more rest and hence, were going to be “underutilized”.
The DGCA had earlier announced on the same website that it had cancelled the earlier FDTL known as an Aeronautical Information Circular (AIC) of 92 and that the new CAR would super cede it. The new CAR had also introduced norms for Ultra Long Haul Operations, since Air India, the national carrier had introduced such flights. This new FDTL policy, while granting pilots more rest on certain types of airline operations was considered by many professional pilots to be a step in the right direction while drawing flak from airline managers who were strapped for pilots.
As of this moment the Indian Government has declined to give anything in writing as to what pilots should follow as none of the two documents is valid. Hence technically, India does not have any FDTL policy at this point of time making all flights on Indian registered aircraft with Indian DGCA licence holders non-ICAO compliant.
Furthermore in the absence of the CAR, no official document exists in India on the number of pilots and the FTL required for Ultra Long Haul Operations such as those operated by Air India on the Mumbai (BOM) –New York (JFK) and Delhi (DEL)-New York (JFK) non -stop routes.
The DGCA notice announcing the decision to keep the CAR “in abeyance” also states that the decision was made by a “competent authority” in the Ministry of Civil Aviation- thereby tacitly implying that the DGCA per se could not be held responsible for this move due to the involvement of a “higher office”. This casts a serious shadow over the autonomy of the DGCA and exposes its complicity with its parent ministry which ironically also runs Air India, the national carrier. Most decisions therefore, are made to benefit the commercial interests of Air India along with those of other private airlines – some of whom are politically linked. One of India’s large airlines poised to start international operations is even owned by a sitting member of parliament also known to have close ties with the Minister of Civil Aviation.
As per the DGCA’s notification, a committee to review the CAR on FDTL has been formed – chaired by a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Civil Aviation- whose terms of reference include “recommending certain amendments, keeping in view the availability of pilots and their optimum utilization”. This openly exposes the collusion between the Indian Ministry of Civil Aviation and the Operators of Indian air carriers to curtail the rest hours of pilots so as to “utilize” them more. Faced with confirmed orders of hundreds of new aircraft and an acute pilot shortage caused primarily by a mismanagement of available resources, such desperate measures by the Indian Government can only lead to disaster.
The airline owners of India had earlier formed a cartel known as the “Federation of Indian Airlines” chaired by the erstwhile Air India Chairman V Thulasidas, who also happened to be a senior bureaucrat in the Indian Administrative Service, to lobby for favorable Government policies. Whilst in service, Thulasidas had issued directives to all heads of Air India stations the world over to obtain copies of FDTL regulations in their respective countries so as to pick and choose parts from each that could be incorporated in a revised CAR to favour air operators in India whilst at the same time satisfy the public that International practices were being adhered to. What they would not tell the public of course, is that FDTL is a complex aero medical issue that requires the expertise of avation medicine specialists and NOT file pushing greedy bureaucrats.
After retiring from his post as the Chairman of Air India, Thulasidas has been offered a post at the Prime Ministerial Office to facilitate the acquisition of new aircraft for Air India Ltd. Interestingly enough, India’s top bureaucrat in the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Ashok Chawla, is also a member of Thulasidas’ parent cadre – the Indian Administrative Service.
No surprise therefore that the C.A.R on pilots FDTL should be “reviewed” by a committee headed by a Joint Secretary from the same Ministry and from the same administrative service! According to internal sources within the ministry not a single member of this committee is a pilot or an aviation medicine specialist.
So desperate is the Government to modify pilots’ FDTL to cater for the commercial interests of airlines that it has given its own established procedures a go by. According to a document that lays down the procedure for modifying an existing C.A.R states “Whenever a new CAR or revision to the existing CAR is proposed to be issued, the draft of the proposed CAR/revision shall be posted on DGCA website or circulated to all the persons likely to be affected thereby for their objections/suggestions. The objections/ suggestions received within the stipulated period shall be analyzed and if found acceptable shall be incorporated in the proposed CAR before promulgation.”
The document goes on to say that “every revision shall be accompanied by a “Revision Notice” which shall indicate the pages affected and the justification for the revision. The Revision Notice shall be filed along with the revised CAR in the folder.
It also states that “whenever there is a major change/ revision, the Revision Notice shall indicate that the CAR has been revised in its entirety and CAR issued earlier shall be discarded. All revisions to the CAR shall be indicated by a sideline on the left side of the affected pages indicating the change/ revision to the CAR”.
No such procedures have been followed in this case.
Almost 70 percent of civil aviation fatalities are attributed to human error and of these; pilot fatigue contributes to approximately 15-20 percent of the total number of accidents- a fact that is being overshadowed by a few individuals blinded by greed.