Acceding to a long-pending demand from Air India to enable it to use a standard pool of pilots for various aircraft types, aviation regulator DGCA has allowed a small batch of its cockpit crew to interchange between Boeing 777 and 787 aircraft on a trial foundation to allow the airline to use its crew optimally at a time it’s watching a widening scarcity of pilots.
| Photo Credit: B. Jothi Rmalingam
Acceding to a long-pending demand from Air India to enable it to use a standard pool of pilots for various aircraft types, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has allowed a small batch of its cockpit crew to interchange between Boeing 777 and 787 aircraft on a trial foundation to allow the airline to use its crew optimally at a time of a widening scarcity of pilots.
The pilot fraternity and security specialists have, nonetheless, underlined the necessity to train utmost warning whereas allowing flexibility in crew utilisation, and demanded strict and third-party oversight on the train.
In a letter to Air India on March 3, aviation regulator DGCA allowed blended fleet trial operations, figuring out eight pilot examiners (those that certify different pilots) to be a part of the part 1 of the trial. The pilots, a few of whom fly Boeing 777s and others Boeing 787s, will endure floor and simulator coaching for changeover from one sort to the opposite. Following this, they are going to be ready to fly a minimal of 150 hours on the brand new sort, together with a minimal of 10 landings.
Trial interval
“This exercise will enable us to collect empirical data and decide the future course of action on scaling up the trial,” mentioned a senior DGCA official on the situation of anonymity. The official added that 16 international locations around the globe enable interchangeability of pilots, however they too have finished so in a phased method. “The demand has been there for quite sometime, but such a decision involves extensive due diligence which is why it took time,” the official added.
In an inside message to Air India workers, the airline’s CEO Campbell Wilson welcomed the choice as it could allow “captains on both fleets to operate either type, expanding their experience, professional development, variety and operating scope, as well as according the company more resilience and flexibility.” He mentioned that the choice would make Air India the primary and solely airline in India to have this approval.
Last month, Air India introduced an order of 470 aircraft from Airbus and Boeing, which incorporates 20 Boeing 787s and 10 Boeing 777-9s. This means the airline now requires “7,000-8,000” pilots within the subsequent 10 years which some throughout the airline describe as a “nightmare” scenario provided that the airline has seen some cancellations on long-haul flights to the U.S. due to current crew scarcity. The airline’s CEO acknowledged this and mentioned that efforts to restore aircraft in disrepair had led to a mismatch.
Need for warning
Mohan Ranganathan, aviation security skilled and former teacher pilot of Boeing 737, has known as for the necessity to train warning. “An airline’s commercial interests should not drive regulatory decisions,” he advised The Hindu.
On October 12, 1976, Captain Okay.D. Gupta, who was then the Operations Manager at Indian Airlines in Mumbai, flew a Boeing 737 from Delhi to Mumbai and after spending the remaining day ending his workplace work had to step in to fly a Caravelle flight to Chennai due to non-availability of crew. During take-off, there was engine hearth and he couldn’t shut off the gasoline provide as a result of on a Caravelle airplane, the pilot strikes the swap down to flip it off, however on a Boeing airplane, it’s the different method round.
“The last sentence recorded on the cockpit voice recorder was, ‘I am very very tired’,” recounted Captain Ranganathan. All onboard the Caravelle airplane died.
“When a pilot is fatigued, he or she will revert to old habits or recall steps to operate the old machine he is accustomed to,” he defined. “Therefore, if this is being done to meet crew shortage, the DGCA must ensure that there is an independent audit. Let’s not forget that many examiners at Air India are appointed not on the basis of competence, but because of their connections.”
Even although Boeing 787s and 777s are aircraft by the identical producer, they’ve totally different cockpit instrumentation.
