Considering aviation safety and pilots' welfare, the Airline Pilots Association of India (ALPA) has made an appeal to the aviation regulatory body DGCA. Their demand is that the recent decision by DGCA to increase working hours for Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft pilots should be cancelled immediately.
The pilots have written a letter to DGCA on this matter. In it, they have clearly stated that the working hours were already very long before. If working hours are increased further on top of that, pilots will become very fatigued.
As a result, the possibility of pilots making mistakes increases significantly. This can put aviation safety in question and invite major danger.
What is in the new rule? According to the new rule, if there are two pilots on a Boeing 787 aircraft, the Flight Duty Time Limit (FDTL) has been increased from 10 hours to 10.5 hours. And the Flight Duty Period (FDP) has been made 14 hours instead of 13 hours. This means pilots will have to do 14 hours of duty in that case.
The pilots' complaint is that DGCA is paying more attention to the convenience and profit of airline companies rather than safety.
In this context, they have also reminded about the recent horrific plane crash in Ahmedabad. Therefore, a section of pilots claims that increasing working hours in such circumstances is not right at all. The pilots have also informed that there are problems with the captain's chair reclining in Boeing 787 aircraft. As a result, pilots cannot rest properly during long flights. Therefore, the pilots' demand is that until this decision is cancelled, arrangements must be made to have three pilots on all flights lasting more than eight hours.
