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Mahesh

11/04/24 16:30 PM IST

New Flight Duty Time Limitation (FDTL) rules

In News
  • Aviation safety regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has written to Indian airlines, asking when they would be in position to implement the new Flight Duty Time Limitation (FDTL) rules.
FDTL rules
  • As per the new rules, among other changes, mandatory weekly rest period for pilots shall increase to 48 hours from the current 36.
  • Their night flying would also come down through a combination of extension of definition of “night” by an hour and curtailing the number of night landings allowed to be made by the same crew.
  • Complying with these rules would require airlines to either hire and train more pilots or scale back operations.
  • Airline officials lament that a hard deadline that gives only a few months to the carriers would impact their operations and business.
  • Those in favour of expeditious implementation argue that airlines had enough time until June 1, as the new rules were notified early January.
  • Further, they say the carriers were sounded out much before that by the DGCA through the consultative process.
  • The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) mandates that the country where an aircraft operator or airline is based shall establish regulations for the purpose of managing fatigue.
  • Current FDTL rules in India, issued by the DGCA in 2019, stipulate different categories of maximum flight duty periods per day, based on maximum permitted landings and flight time.
  • Among other things, the regulations stipulate mandatory rest periods between flight duty periods, in-flight rest periods for long-haul flights, other mandatory rest periods, guidelines for scheduling night operations, and maximum cumulative flight time and duty period limitations per week, two weeks, four weeks, 90 days, and one year. The rules also include special norms for ultra-long-haul flights.
  • According to the DGCA, airlines are required to establish their own limitations on these counts within the regulator’s framework of fatigue management regulations, which are based on ICAO standards and best practices of the US aviation regulator Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).
  • FDTL rules prohibit airlines from asking flight crew to operate a flight if the prescribed time limitations are exceeded.
  • In addition, carriers are not supposed to ask a crew member to operate a flight if it is known or suspected that the “flight crew member is fatigued to the extent that the safety of flight may be adversely affected”.
  • Airlines are also required to prepare flight crew rosters “sufficiently in advance”
  • In addition to training flight crew on fatigue management, carriers are required to maintain a system of fatigue report management, using which incidents of crew fatigue can be brought to light. Such a system should follow a non-punitive and confidential policy, which should also define the response to a fatigue report. Executive responsibility for addressing fatigue management needs to be defined by the airline.
  • The key reason why there are frequent instances of pilots refusing to operate flights citing fatigue or FDTL norms is that the DGCA’s regulations on FDTL stipulate the responsibility and accountability of flight crews as well.
Source- Indian Express

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