Regulatory retreat poses flying safety hazard, say experts

Hard-fought regulations designed to protect both aviation safety and pilot wellbeing— won through 13 years of litigation catalysed by a'2010 crash that killed 158 people — have been undone to accommodate an airline whose mismanagement did not prepare despite ample notice, experts and pilots have said.

- Neha LM Tripathi

Stranded passengers at the Varanasi airport on Saturday.

(AFP)

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation on Friday granted IndiGo sweeping exemptions from crew fatigue standards that pilot unions fought for over a decade to establish, eight months after the Delhi high court disposed of the case believing India had finally achieved enforceable protections aligned with global benchmarks.

The regulatory retreat, prompted by IndiGo’s cancellation of hundreds of flights due to what the airline admitted were “misjudgment and planning gaps”, has triggered warnings from aviation experts that India’s willingness to compromise courtapproved safety standards for one carrier's operational convenience exposes the entire system to preventable catastrophe.

The litigation began in 2012, two years after an Air India Express Boeing 737 overshot the runway at Mangaluru, plunged intoa gorge and exploded, killing 158 passengers and crew. Only eight survived. Investigators determined the commander had been “disorientated” after reportedly sleeping through much of the three-hour flight.

The Indian Commercial Pilots Association, Indian Pilots Guild and Federation of Indian Pilots petitioned the Delhi High Court, arguing that Indian scheduling practices pushed crew to unsafe limits and demanding implementation of fatigue-mitigation norms aligned with global safety standards that had been adopted by aviation authorities worldwide.