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Weekly rest for pilots could be raised from 36 hours to 48 hours with effect from July 1, 2025, and the reduction in night flying “rolled out” from November 1, 2025, according to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation’s (DGCA) roadmap for implementing relaxed duty norms for cockpit crew before the Delhi High Court.
The liberalised norms governing duty and rest periods for pilots in order to combat concerns over rising fatigue levels were announced in January 2024, and were to be implemented from June 1, 2024. But the rules were put on hold after stiff opposition from airlines, forcing pilots’ unions to approach the court. After several rounds of court-ordered mediation held by the DGCA between Air India and the pilot bodies, the DGCA agreed to a phased implementation of its proposal. On Thursday, it submitted a detailed scheme for enforcing the specific norms.
“Out of 22 clauses, 15 clauses would be implemented from 01.07.2025 and the remaining 7 clauses would be rolled out from 01.11.2025,” according to the affidavit before the Delhi High Court signed by the DGCA’s Assistant Director (Operations) Himanshu Srivastava.
The next hearing on the matter is on February 24.
Key among the provisions recommended for implementation from July 1 is the weekly rest period of “continuous 48 hours”, up from the present 36 hours.
The set of provisions delayed for implementation until November 1, 2025 include a revised definition for night duty, where duty period falling between midnight to 6 a.m. would be considered night duty, instead of the present definition which considers a period between midnight to 5 a.m. As airlines are allowed to assign pilots to only two consecutive nights of flying, this provision will bring down the quantum of night flying. Further, the DGCA has also capped the total number of landings a pilot can conduct to only two night landings, if a duty period encroaches on the night duty period.
Pilots flying on ultra-long range flights for two consecutive nights, including those to the U.S. and back, will also get an additional 24 hours of rest. Therefore, rest of ‘at least 120 hours’ will be raised to ‘at least 144 hours’.
Pilots have been demanding the scrapping of two-consecutive nights of flying, which was introduced by the DGCA in April 2019, as night duties disrupt the body’s natural sleep-wake cycle, cause fatigue, and impact levels of alertness. They point out that in the recent past, due to increased international flying, the quantum of night flying had increased exponentially. Airlines had started foregoing international layovers that would allow overnight rest at a local hotel, and require pilots to now operate the return leg of the journey to ensure cost efficiency, further increasing their workload.
Notably, the DGCA has used the term “roll-out” and not implementation for the set of rules delayed until November 1, sources in pilots’ unions said, indicating that the regulator could be planning a staggered enforcement.
Airlines have strongly opposed the DGCA’s proposal for restricting night flying. IndiGo had said in a submission to the DGCA in December that expanding the definition of night flying would have “a severe operational impact” and it should therefore remain unchanged.
Air India too said that it would implement the new definition only after the regulator brought a modern, data-based fatigue risk management system.
Published – February 20, 2025 08:10 pm IST