The recent deaths of two on-duty Indian pilots (flying for Air India and Akasa) have placed the chilling reality of crew fatigue under the spotlight once again.
The new Flight Duty Timing Limitation (FDTL) norms were scheduled for implementation in November 2025. However, after the delay-cancellation crisis involving IndiGo in early-December last year and a plea from some civil aviation players stating they weren’t in a position to comply with the norms in toto, the new regime was deferred through exemptions granted by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). The West Asia war and the compulsions for airlines arising because of it created the conditions for the exemptions to continue. In essence, the new FDTL norms remained forgotten until the two deaths occurred and brought focus back to duty timings.
A letter by the Airline Pilots Association of India (ALPA) argues that the continued grant of variations in FDTL norms to operators is at least partially to blame, as it had “materially diluted the intent of the FDTL regulations”. These variations, ALPA says, were originally conceived as transitional measures but have effectively become the norm. This, it argues, defeats the purpose of fatigue management and “perpetuates scheduling practices that operate at or near the regulatory limits” without adequate safety buffers.
ALPA has sought a structured and time-bound programme for the gradual withdrawal of all such variations in norms, culminating in the full and uniform implementation of FDTL provisions across operators. A clearly articulated roadmap, with a defined end-date for the variations, would provide both regulatory certainty and operational clarity.
Anticipating resistance from the airlines, ALPA argues that any reconsideration or dilution of the approved FDTL framework at this stage would be difficult to justify since the regulations were formulated after due process and wide stakeholder consultation.
But a more serious indictment of the airlines comes from a recent forensic analysis — Why Indian Pilots Are Dying — by the Safety Matters Foundation, which highlights the extent to which this concern is being brushed under the carpet by the airline operators and the regulator, DGCA.
The report highlights the gravity of the problem and offers data to back its claims. It points out that IndiGo, the market leader, received 8,721 fatigue complaints from its pilots and rejected 96.9% of them while Air India received 1,576 reports but rejected 54.5%. Interestingly, Air India Express, the latter’s sister concern, received 278 fatigue reports and accepted all of them. As many in the civil aviation industry have pointed out, this data is clear evidence that IndiGo chooses to remain in denial rather than acknowledge and solve the problem. The foundation’s findings are corroborated by ALPA, which says that available information obtained through RTI indicates an alarmingly low rate of acceptance of fatigue reports by operators.
The foundation’s report, however, is equally damning of DGCA and its role in the current state of affairs. It points out that DGCA permits a pilot to be scheduled for 60 hours of duty per seven days but a 2021 WHO-ILO report finds that anything above 55 hours of flying per week elevates the risk of stroke by 35% and the risk of death from ischemic heart disease by 17%. The report thus posits that the “Indian regulatory ceiling is 5 hours above the international scientific threshold for cardiovascular mortality.”
Fixing this and ensuring that the pilot community has adequate rest would require airlines to hire more pilots, fly fewer night sectors, and accept lower scheduling efficiency. The report argues that DGCA has, so far, prioritised “scheduling continuity for the operators” and has made rules that count hours rather than measure fatigue. It has failed to proactively publish the data that would allow independent scrutiny, let alone create a regime of carrier-specific exemptions from the diluted rules of October-December 2025. In a nutshell, the body vested with ensuring the country has a fit and capable pilot community has failed to stand up to pressure from airlines that anyway seem to have only their commercial interests in mind.
The consequences of this are encapsulated by data. Keeping aside the deaths between 2009 and 2023, 1,635 Indian pilots were declared temporarily unfit and 94 permanently unfit. The number of temporarily medically unfit pilots soared from 25 in 2009 to 223 in 2021. This data, it is worth noting, has not been made public by DGCA.
Airline insiders, on the other hand, say that cumulative fatigue is the bigger culprit: Social environments and urban lifestyles have led to a state of being consistently tired due to lack of discipline, insufficient sleep, irregular routines, disrupted circadian rhythms, cumulative stress and high mobile/gadget engagement. In fact, they argue, the compulsions of urban living have made piloting a higher risk profession than in the past, and no amount of roster and schedule permutations and combinations will alter this fact.
This brings us to the irony of the situation. If airlines and the authorities can’t remedy the aspects highlighted by the airline insiders, the least one expects is that they fix what remains in their ambit and control. Failure to do so amounts to negligent administration.
Anjuli Bhargava writes about governance, infrastructure, and the social sector. The views expressed are personal
