The Delhi High Court on Wednesday sought the response of the Centre and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on a plea raising questions over the aviation regulator’s norms on flying hours for pilots.
The plea alleged that DGCA’s norm on the Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL) was violative as it allowed air operators to stretch the duty hours of pilots resulting in their fatigue.
“This is very dangerous… We are concerned about safety of passengers,” a Bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice C. Hari Shankar said. while directing the DGCA to place before it the flight timings and duty timings of pilots.
‘Norms violated’
Kerala resident Yashwanth Shenoy alleged that the prescribed norm for pilots was maximum eight hours flight time and six landings per day, but it was being violated under the watch of the regulator.
In his petition, he said that India had in July 2007 prepared a draft FDTL but it never saw the light of the day as the airline operators opposed it on grounds of commercial loss. He said a watered-down version was notified and implemented in 2012-14.
Mr. Shenoy said many airline related accident had occurred due to ‘pilot fatigue’. “One of the contributing factors to the Mangalore air crash (of May 2010 that killed 152 people) was pilot fatigue,” he remarked.
He sought direction to the DGCA to reframe the Civil Aviation Requirement (CAR) on FDTL for flight crew by involving the stakeholders and taking into consideration international best practices.
The petition also sought to stay all the variations and exceptions approved by the DGCA in alleged violation of the FDTL CAR. He alleged that these “variations were allowed to air operators without any scientific study or risk assessment in violation of their own regulations”.
