Crew of several airlines protest DGCA’s new duty time regulation
The new Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) requirement of airline crews’ duty hours saw protests by crew members from across airlines on Monday. Airline employees complained that it increased work load, drastically reducing their rest periods during long-haul flights.
Ahigh-level internal committee of aviation regulator DGCA had revisited the duty and rest period norms for cabin crew before formulating fresh and comprehensive rules. This comes after numerous complaints from cabin crew across airlines alleging that the management had been flouting their Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL) rules by forcing them to operate flights even during the mandated rest period.
Cabin crew from Air India, which operates between London, Melbourne, Sydney, Newark and Chicago and is preparing for maiden runs to San Francisco and Toronto, alleged that their concerns about fatigue were disregarded. Seventeen airhostesses and one male cabin crew member have been terminated by the national carrier for delaying flights in the last six months.
A Jet Airways cabin crew member said they would benefit from the fact that their flights use Brussels as a hub to break journeys. “There should however be a distinction between the flight crew (pilots) and the cabin crew (airhostesses and pursers),” the crew member said. Several cabin crew in representations to Satendra Singh, FDTL chairman at the DGCA pointed out that the International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAO) to which India is a signatory does not distinguish between the flight crew and the cabin crew except on reporting and deplaning timings, which vary due to separate job specifications.
An airhostess with Air India said, “Both the flight crew and the cabin crew are human beings. If one looks at the job functions, the fatigue is greater in the cabin crew,” adding that barring DGCA, the same has been accepted by almost all international aviation regulators.
“The existing norms offer scope for misinterpretation by both the management and the crew. So the DGCA dug deeper into ICAO recommendations to plug loopholes,” Singh said.
Ahigh-level internal committee of aviation regulator DGCA had revisited the duty and rest period norms for cabin crew before formulating fresh and comprehensive rules. This comes after numerous complaints from cabin crew across airlines alleging that the management had been flouting their Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL) rules by forcing them to operate flights even during the mandated rest period.
Cabin crew from Air India, which operates between London, Melbourne, Sydney, Newark and Chicago and is preparing for maiden runs to San Francisco and Toronto, alleged that their concerns about fatigue were disregarded. Seventeen airhostesses and one male cabin crew member have been terminated by the national carrier for delaying flights in the last six months.
An airhostess with the national carrier said, “Horizontal rest has been done away with, restricting it to only vertical. What we find odd is that with or without proper bunks, the rest perod remains the same, which does not help the crews’ fatigue.” The new requirements, according to these crew members, will only result in an increase in filing of fatigue reports, since the stated minimum rest period before flights across 3 time zones (Paris, Frankfurt etc) and 6 other time zones (London, Birmingham etc) are 14 hours, instead of the 28 hours that they had requested.
A Jet Airways cabin crew member said they would benefit from the fact that their flights use Brussels as a hub to break journeys. “There should however be a distinction between the flight crew (pilots) and the cabin crew (airhostesses and pursers),” the crew member said. Several cabin crew in representations to Satendra Singh, FDTL chairman at the DGCA pointed out that the International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAO) to which India is a signatory does not distinguish between the flight crew and the cabin crew except on reporting and deplaning timings, which vary due to separate job specifications.
An airhostess with Air India said, “Both the flight crew and the cabin crew are human beings. If one looks at the job functions, the fatigue is greater in the cabin crew,” adding that barring DGCA, the same has been accepted by almost all international aviation regulators.
“The existing norms offer scope for misinterpretation by both the management and the crew. So the DGCA dug deeper into ICAO recommendations to plug loopholes,” Singh said.
