DGCA’s Flight Duty Time Limitation Rules

What’s in today’s article?

• Why in the News?
• About Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA)
• Functions of DGCA
• About Flight Duty Time Limitation Rules
• News Summary
• Airlines’ Concerns

Why in the News?

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has written to Indian airlines, asking them to indicate when they would be in a position to implement the new Flight Duty Time Limitation (FDTL) rules.

About Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA)

• DGCA is the regulatory body in the field of Civil Aviation, primarily dealing with safety issues.
• It was accorded a statutory status under the Aircraft (Amendment) Bill, 2020.
• It is responsible for regulation of air transport services to/from/within India and for enforcement of civil air regulations, air safety and airworthiness standards.
• It also co-ordinates all regulatory functions with International Civil Aviation Organisation.
• Headquarters: New Delhi

Functions of DGCA

• Registration of civil aircraft.
• Certification of airports.
• Licensing to pilots, aircraft maintenance engineers, air traffic controllers and flight engineers, and conducting examinations and checks for that purpose.
• Formulation of standards of airworthiness for civil aircraft registered in India and grant of certificates of airworthiness to such aircraft.
• Conducting investigation into incidents and serious incidents involving aircraft up to 2250 kg AUW.
• Taking accident prevention measures, including formulation of implementation of Safety Aviation Management Programmes.
• Checks on the proficiency of flight crew and other operational personnel such as flight dispatchers and cabin crew.
• Granting Air Operator's Certificates to Indian carriers and regulation of air transport services operating to/from/within/over India by Indian and foreign operators.
• Approval of institutes engaged in flying training including simulator training, AME training, air traffic services training, etc.
• Safety Oversight of all entities approved/ certified/ licensed under the Aircraft Rules 1937.

About Flight Duty Time Limitation Rules

• Flight crew fatigue and exhaustion are seen as major factors contributing to human errors in aircraft operations, which can lead to catastrophic accidents.
• Also, fatigue and exhaustion can be dangerous for the health of the crew.
• Across airlines, pilots have been expressing concerns over growing fatigue and stress due to:
  • Being stretched to their limits in terms of flying hours,
  • Haphazard and ill-planned rostering, and
  • Unusually high crew utilisation levels as carriers compete to rapidly expand their networks.
• 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.
• The DGCA, in 2019, had issued the Flight Duty Time Limitation (FDTL) Rules, accordingly.
• Key Rules include:
  • Different categories of maximum flight duty periods per day based on maximum permitted landings and flight time.
  • Mandatory rest periods between flight duty periods,
  • In-flight rest periods for long-haul flights,
  • Guidelines for scheduling night operations,
  • 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.
  • FDTL rules prohibit airlines from asking flight crew to operate a flight if the prescribed time limitations are exceeded.
• According to the DGCA, airlines are required to establish their own limitations on these counts within the regulator’s framework of fatigue management regulations.

News Summary

• Recently, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation has written to Indian airlines, asking them to indicate when they would be in a position to implement the new Flight Duty Time Limitation (FDTL) rules.
• The communication from the DGCA follows a hearing in the Delhi High Court earlier this month.
• The High Court had asked the DGCA to indicate the tentative date for the implementation of the new FDTL regulations that were initially supposed to be enforced from June 1.
• However, the date was deferred due to stiff resistance from airlines. The DGCA was asked to indicate the likely implementation date in the next hearing scheduled for May 8.
• The decision to postpone was in line with directions issued to the DGCA by the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) in March.

Airlines’ Concerns

• In February, the Federation of Indian Airlines (FIA), which comprises IndiGo, Air India, and SpiceJet—had written to the DGCA seeking postponement of the new rules by a year.
• Airlines had been voicing concerns that implementation of the new rule would result in a requirement of around 20-25 per cent more pilots, whom they would not be able to hire and train in such a short period.
  • As per the new rules, among other changes, mandatory weekly rest period for pilots shall increase to 48 hours from the current 36.
  • Also, their night flying shall 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.
• Clearly, these rules would require airlines to either hire and train more pilots in order to maintain their existing scale of operations. The alternative would be to scale back operations.
• The FIA had said that carriers would have to cut capacity by 15-20 per cent if the new rules, notified in January, were implemented from June 1.

Hence, the DGCA has written to airlines, asking them to indicate when they would be in a position to implement the new rules.

Q1. What does Black Box in Flights do?

The black box, also referred to as the flight data recorder, is a device that logs every action an aircraft takes while in flight. The black box, also referred to as a 'flight data recorder', is an instrument that documents all of the operations of the aircraft while it is in flight.

Q2. In which layer do planes fly?

Most of the aeroplanes fly in the troposphere. It extends up to approximately 11 km above sea level.

Source: Pilot fatigue: The back-and-forth on new FDTL rules
Hindu