'Got Away Scot-Free': Aviation Safety Strategist Calls For Probe On IndiGo Crisis
A committee must look into the IndiGo fiasco, said Captain Amit Singh.
India’s largest airline, IndiGo, has gone on to cancel hundreds more flights across the country as the crisis in the airline intensified on Friday. The chaos has left thousands stranded in airports, and social media is rife with videos of angry passengers demanding money or another flight to their destination.
Captain Amit Singh, a pilot and an aviation safety strategist, told The Core on Thursday that he did not perceive this as a staffing or a scheduling issue. He said, “From a planning point of view, there is no issue. The basic issue is, what they have cited is the flight duty time limitations. So it is not that something happened on the first of December or the second of December that they woke up, that, oh, we are short by so many hundred pilots.”
IndiGo’s cancellation of around 500 flights has crippled Indian aviation. The regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has, meanwhile, has relaxed the flight duty time limitation (FDTL) rules that barred airlines from substituting leave for crew members’ weekly rest.
The airline has claimed that disruptions have arisen primarily from misjudgment and planning gaps in implementing the new rules, and also said more cancellations are expected in the coming days. However, it said that operations will be fully restored by February 10.
The DGCA also put out a statement on Wednesday saying that almost 60% of the cancellations were because of flight duty time limitation issues.
“A lot of people may have lost a lot of money, a lot of precious time and businesses may have been affected. People who are going for medical treatment may be affected. So who's responsible for this?” asked Singh and added that the DGCA must
Singh also said that IndiGo “deliberately” led to this situation, because of which the public suffered and got away scot-free.
Edited Excerpts:
What brought things to this pass? Could IndiGo have foreseen this?
I don't see any planning gaps here because the airline plans the summer schedules and the winter schedules. That's what they've been doing year on year, and they have a whole commercial department. They take the schedules to the regulator.
The regulator approves them based on some data that they provide which is published by the regulator. They proudly boast that they're increasing the number of passengers that they are carrying, the number of destinations that they are serving, increased the number of aircraft. They are number one.
From a planning point of view, there is no issue. The basic issue is, what they have cited is the flight duty time limitations. So it is not that something happened on the first of December or the second of December that they woke up that, oh, we are short by so many hundred pilots.
So that is not a planning issue because they have the best softwares. They keep a track of everything. The airline matches the line-ready pilots available, because you have a number of pilots.
Some may be under training, some may be undergoing medical, and some may be on leave. So, what are the line-ready pilots available to an airline? So that is the number they have and then they match it with the number of flights.
So when you're planning the next month's roster for the pilots, you put down pilots against each flight. That is when you will come to know that so many flights are open without any pilots. Planning must have started way back.
And how is the plan that you have an empty chart with all the flights? First, you planned a training that so many pilots are on training, but that is mandatory. Other safety training or courses and leave, then whatever is left that you plot against each flight.
I was talking to an Indigo pilot this morning, actually, and he was saying that, from his perspective, not from a sort of management perspective, that one is the number of winter flights have increased and the number of pilots have not in the last six months or so. And you also have the FDTL.
I'm just trying to understand the variables at work here. So the FDTL was a known factor. The winter schedule was a known factor.
And pilots, let's say, may or may not have been able to ramp up to the extent needed. So why would any airline not be, let's say, gearing up for an FDTL change, given everything else that is in its control?
See, the schedule, of course, they're aware. And when you submit schedule for approval to the DGCA and you increase the number of flights by six percent, 900, 856 additional flights per week. So you have to see how many pilots I have.
So either there's a disconnect, those departments are working in silos, that the commercial department goes ahead and says, we want more flights, we want more revenues. And they do not inform the flight operations. When the schedule is approved, they give it to the flight operations.
That happens in airlines, mostly public sector airlines. The commercial is going ahead with expansion. They don't have pilots.
The operational department is not taken into confidence when making the schedules. But this Indigo, the way they run, they are very highly coordinated airlines and very well run. This was a strategic move to save costs, again, save costs in terms of the number of pilots.
So every department has some projection on cost saving year by year. So if, for example, the flight ops will say, this is my flight ops budget and I'll manage within this budget. So once they have committed, they'll try to keep the costs under control.
Keep the costs under control means maximise the utilisation of pilots. And if required, get some regulations changed or waivers done so that with the existing human resources, we can continue to fly even with the extended or enhanced schedule. So this is a department's basically overreach, they're overstretching.
But at the level of the accountable manager, the CEO, they have to understand that you cannot go beyond a certain limit, and you have to have fallbacks. If your calculation is based on certain presumptions that this particular rule will get implemented, then what if it doesn't? Is there a fallback?
So there was no plan B.
You're saying the airline was betting on the rule not being implemented or being given an extension?
They were looking at implementing the fatigue risk management system for which in September, DGCA issued a draft circular to the airlines. Fatigue risk management system is a highly specialised data-driven system which no airline in India can manage. But they wanted to implement it only because they saw the advantage of stretching the number of hours a pilot can fly.
That advantage they saw, and they wanted to implement it. The regulator is not prepared. After the Mangalore accident, the committee recommended that FRMS should be implemented.
Then there was a Zaidi committee after that. The Zaidi committee examined the whole FETL issue, and they recommended that FRMS must be implemented because at that stage, ICAO did not come up with FRMS, but they had it in the draft. So the Zaidi committee said that whenever ICAO starts implementing FRMS, we should be ready.
So DGCA should start training their officers on FRMS. But unless you are trained on FRMS, how will you approve a system? Right now, who's trained in DGCA on FRMS? So that is the issue.
So the operator basically went to the regulator that this is the way we can stretch the number of hours and we need this. So that case must have been accepted by DGCA. DGCA issued a circular.
The ICAO and DGCA's own regulations say that if you want to implement FRMS, you have to make regulations for it. So a regulation cannot be implemented by a circular. A circular can give you guidance on how to implement the policy.
But it cannot be the regulation, a circular cannot issue a circular that this regulation is implemented, and this is how you will implement. It has to be a civil evasion requirement, which means that Cthe AR has to be drafted, put out to the public for comments for 30 days. Whatever comments are received that you deliberate upon, accept or reject, then you formalise that this is the new regulation.
But DGCA wanted to do it through a circular, and there was opposition to that from various pilot bodies and beginning of the month, these pilot associations met the DGCA and they said it has to be a collaborative effort. You cannot do it unilaterally. So I think DGCA saw that there is pushback.
So they did not approve the FRMS, which was the plan A. There was no plan B for Indigo. So that failed and that basically there was a collapse in the whole system.
That was the premise based so much. That is what I feel. Well, suddenly nothing happened.
The FTDL was introduced in January of 2024. There was a pushback from the airlines operators. In March, it was kept under abeyance.
Then the associations of pilots they went to the high court and the high court gave directions for it to be implemented. DGCA said we will implement it in a phased manner. And when the first phase was implemented, which was the toughest one, wherein rest period was to be enhanced, so nothing happened.
No flights got cancelled, nothing happened. The second one was implemented, but nothing happened. But suddenly on the second, the whole system collapsed.
A lot of people may have lost a lot of money, a lot of precious time and businesses may have been affected. People who are going for medical treatment may be affected. So who's responsible for this?
The government has given them an extension, which is okay. We feel it is an FTDL issue, and we extend it to February or later. But who will pay for all the losses? There has to be an inquiry into it.
A committee has to enquire. So what I feel is that four people in the ministry or DGCA have decided this. Okay, give them an extension.
But then there has to be a fine along with it. The passengers have to be compensated. So there is no deterrence.
Tomorrow, Air India will do the same thing.
How are the other airlines faring on this count? I mean, they've all had to meet this same FDTL deadline isn't it?
When phase one, phase two were implemented, nothing happened in Indigo. So why, suddenly, on December 2 things collapsed? So there has to be the same thing.
There has to be an enquiry. A committee has to sit down and investigate what happened on that day. Air India, as such, does not have such a shortage.
They, in fact, have on some fleets excess pilots. That's why they were thinking of giving a flexible roster to the pilots. So they're not so tight on the pilot situation.
It is not that better managed or something. Indigo was supposed to be better managed, but they have deliberately led to the situation wherein the public has been put to inconvenience, and they have got away scot-free.
You're an active pilot yourself. Just for people who are trying to understand the whole issue of flight duty time limits, which is what this seems to be centred around.
Where does India stand vis-à-vis other parts of the world, including the parts that you fly in actively?
See, if you look at the flight duty time limitation, it is a human being and the human body which is involved. The International Civil Aviation Organisation, when they have drafted the rules, they say that it has to be scientific because human physiology is a science. So the regulations have to be scientific.
Indian regulation is nowhere close to science. It is ad hoc. The way things have perpetuated, and what you have seen in the last few months or few years, everything is done ad hoc.
There's no science behind it. If you look at science, science from the early days, 1996, when NASA said after extensive research that the maximum flight duty period should be 10 hours, not more.
Beyond 10 hours, the probability of an accident increases by 1.7 times and so on. So there's a whole science and calculation behind it. So even EASA goes up to 13 hours.
So Europeans, what they did, they have a committee of doctors, 13 doctors. They have a committee of specialists in everything, in cardiology, psychology, and neurology. All these doctors sat down, and then they prepared a flight duty time limitation.
They also said 10 hours is the max duty time. You should not go beyond 10 hours. And EASA finally went up to 13 hours because EASA (European Union Aviation Safety Agency) said that you have to balance between commercial and safety.
If you are giving 13 hours, we'll make sure that the rest is accordingly given. But the committee put it down on paper that even though EASA has gone to 13 hours, it is beyond violating the scientific norms. So in India, if you ask them, what is the logic of 13 hours, 16 hours?
There is no science behind it. In India, weekly, we can have a flight duty period of 60 hours. The World Health Organisation and the International Labour Organisation have released a statement that globally there have been 745,000 deaths in 2019 because of cardiac issues and stroke, working more than 55 hours a week.
But pilots can fly 60 hours. So that is the kind of working conditions under which Indian pilots are working. If you see the graph, I've published it, the number of temporary unfit and permanent unfit pilots are increasing year on year.
There has to be a system, a safety management system should look inwards that so many pilots are becoming unavailable for flights. Is it because of our schedules? Are we pushing them?
Are we giving them adequate rest or not? But nobody has done a study on that. So it is just kind of mechanical that you have to be available, you're not available, then we hire another person.
It is that kind of situation. The culture, the safety culture in India, is such that the pilots are crying out for help, and the system says, no, since you are legal, you fly. But the legality, there's no science for it.
Even the courts will not entertain that. Somewhere there has to be sense or logic. Logic is only in science.
