Air India Express has run out of pilots
Pilot shortage forces budget airline to cut flights
(Staff Report)
6 September 2010
India’s low budget carrier Air India Express will stop its daily flight from Sharjah to Kochi and will curtail over 200 other flight services between India and the Gulf sectors till Oct end.
The move, attributed mainly to a shortage of pilots and cabin crew, means that the travel plans of thousands of passengers between the GCC and India will have to be altered shortly.
Air India’s Regional Manager for Gulf Abhay Pathak said the AIE would temporarily cut down the frequency of services between India and the UAE, Muscat and Kuwait, starting from September 7 “as part of correcting the schedule due to commercial and operational reasons.”
Though he did not elaborate on the commercial reasons, Pathak said the airline was rescheduling the operations of the Gulf services to abide by the rule that airline crew should not fly more than 10,000 hours per year.
“Cabin crew are not supposed to exceed 1,000 hours of flying in a year. We are doing this rescheduling of flights because of this. We have some commercial requirements as well,” he told Khaleej Times on Sunday.
Claiming that the changes in flight schedules would not affect the passengers during the generally lean air traffic period after Ramadan and school vacations, Pathak said adequate arrangements would be made to ensure passengers’ convenience.
“Only the Air India Express flight services are getting rescheduled. We have the IC-coded flights (formerly Indian Airlines) flying full-fledged without any changes in the schedule from all the destinations, where AIE schedules are changed. So, they are complementing each other,” he said.
With the only AIE daily flight between Sharjah and Kochi standing cancelled and the daily services from Dubai, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi to different airports in Kerala being cut down by two or three per week.
The passengers flying between the UAE and the south Indian state of Kerala are more likely to be affected due to the shortage of flights.
Just glad I don't have to fly 10000hrs a year