New rules on rest and duty times for pilots

India’s aviation watchdog has deferred a June 1 deadline for airlines to adopt new rules on rest and duty times for pilots, a notice on its website showed, but without stating a reason or a new target date.

The latest news followed a warning from a key airline lobby group, reported last month by the Economic Times newspaper.

There was earlier concern that the scramble to comply with the new rules could cancel up to one-fifth of flights.

Announced in January, the rules increased flight crews’ weekly rest periods to 48 hours from 36 and cut pilots’ night flight duty times to a maximum of 10 hours from 13.

In this week’s revised website notice, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation allowed airlines to retain the older norms.

The rule changes followed a review of data on pilot fatigue drawn from spot checks and airline surveillance after a pilot for budget carrier IndiGo collapsed and died in August before his flight.

The Federation of Indian Airlines warned of the cancellation risk as the watchdog’s deadline left too little time to hire and train the 25 percent more pilots required to satisfy the new rules, the Economic Times said.

The regulator fined Tata Group-owned Air India 8 million rupees or 96,000 dollars last week for breaching flight duty times and fatigue management limits.

The revised notice was criticized by some pilots and aviation safety experts, who posted their outrage on social media platform X.