The Federation of Indian Pilots (FIP) issued a letter on Wednesday to the Directorate Basic of Civil Aviation (DGCA) alleging that IndiGo imposed a “hiring freeze” regardless of having a two-year window to organize for the total rollout of latest flight obligation and relaxation interval norms for cockpit crew.“Regardless of the two-year preparatory window earlier than full FDTL implementation, the airline inexplicably adopted a hiring freeze, entered non-poaching preparations, maintained a pilot pay freeze by cartel-like behaviour, and demonstrated different short-sighted planning practices,” FIP stated, as cited by PTI.
It additional requested the DGCA to think about reallocating IndiGo’s slots to carriers able to working them with out disruption in the course of the peak vacation and fog season if the airline continues to “fail in delivering on its commitments to passengers attributable to its personal avoidable staffing shortages.”The pilots’ physique emphasised that the current surge in IndiGo flight cancellations is just not associated to the Delhi Excessive Courtroom–mandated FDTL laws for pilots.“All different airways have provisioned pilots adequately and stay largely unaffected attributable to well timed planning and preparation,” FIP stated. “The present disruption is the direct consequence of IndiGo’s extended and unorthodox lean manpower technique throughout departments, notably in-flight operations,” it added. After part 1 of the FDTL norms got here into pressure on July 1, the FIP stated “IndiGo lowered pilot go away quotas,” and following the implementation of part 2 on November 1, “tried to purchase again pilot go away.”“These measures noticed poor response and additional broken pilot and worker morale — particularly in a 12 months when airline executives took residence report increments approaching or exceeding 100 per cent, whereas concurrently blaming pilot migration as an alternative of investing in retention and office enhancements,” stated FIP. On Wednesday, IndiGo cancelled greater than 150 flights and confronted prolonged delays throughout a number of airports, citing a number of components, together with crew shortages linked to the rollout of the brand new FDTL norms.In line with civil aviation ministry information, simply 19.7 per cent of IndiGo’s flights have been on time throughout six main airports.FIP urged the regulator to not approve airways’ seasonal schedules until they’ve satisfactory workers to function flights “safely and reliably” underneath the brand new norms. It added that even because the busy winter fog season started, a interval that naturally requires greater pilot availability, IndiGo expanded its winter schedule “with out recruiting or coaching extra pilots,” elevating considerations about operational accountability.The letter additionally identified that, consistent with worldwide apply, the Indian aviation regulator approves two schedules for home airways annually: the winter schedule (late October to late March) and the summer season schedule (late March to late October).The newest FDTL norms, which enhance weekly relaxation intervals to 48 hours, lengthen evening obligation hours, and scale back the variety of permissible evening landings from six to 2, have been initially opposed by home airways, together with IndiGo and Tata Group-owned Air India. Though the foundations have been initially scheduled for implementation in March 2024, carriers sought a phased rollout, citing the necessity for added crew to fulfill the revised necessities.