Pilots are dying of fatigue. They can’t be saved by technology
In 2023, Air India will launch a safety management system called Coruson. It also includes BAM (Boeing Alertness Model), which is incorporated into the airline’s rostering software, used to create and manage schedules for pilots. Coruson is a cloud-based software developed by Ideagen. It centralizes and analyzes safety-related information, such as incidents, hazards and risk assessments, before reporting it. BAM is a software program developed by Boeing in collaboration with Jeppesen. It predicts and manages fatigue among pilots by analyzing flight schedules, performance data, and other factors. Air India CEO Campbell Wilson explained in an internal communication to employees that these tools were created to prevent the creation and maintenance of fatigue-inducing rosters. The carrier also introduced two new digital tools for its crew–the Pilot Sector Report app, to help pilots easily submit information on flight performance, incidents, and observations post-flight; and DocuNet, a digital management system that facilitates the storage, retrieval, and sharing of documents (such as flight manuals, training records, and compliance documents).
Despite these measures, the airline was fined by the DGCA in March this year for violating FDTL limits and fatigue management rules. Air India Express cabin crew called in sick in masse this May to protest “mismanagement.” The protest followed one by the crew of Vistara Airlines, which was mostly pilots. Both Air India and Vistara are now owned by one of India’s largest conglomerates, the Tata Group, which took over the former from the Indian government in January 2022.
Twenty-five of those who called in sick at Air India Express were terminated. Other employees were given an ultimatum. The airline later reinstated those sacked following an intervention from the chief labor commissioner. The regional labor commissioner for Delhi had written to the Tata Group chairman nearly a week earlier, pointing out “blatant violations” of labour laws and demanding that the legitimate concerns raised by the cabin crew were investigated. CNBC reported that Vistara workers said their agitation was due to recent salary changes, which reduced pilot pay to 40 flight hours from 70. First officers protesting the salary changes claimed it would lead to a 57 percent cut in pay. To earn the same amount as they did before, they had to fly 76 hours. Two Air India pilots’ unions wrote to the chairman at the time, stating that these issues were not isolated, but rather systemic. Burnout was the other related issue, with many pilots complaining of inadequate rest and being pushed to their limits.
Captain Singh, a former senior manager at AirAsia, tells WIRED that such effects significantly increase the risk of accidents, but also adversely affect pilot health in the long run. Tail swaps–rushing between different types of aircraft to take off immediately after disembarking from another–have become more prevalent under the 13-hour rules, and can further contribute to exhaustion, as do hasty acclimatization and, most significantly, landing three, four, or more flights consecutively, which Captain Randhawa described as a “severe energy management challenge.”
In the 2024 “Safety Culture Survey” conducted by Singh’s Safety Matters Foundation in July, 81 percent of 530 respondents, primarily medium- to short-haul pilots, stated that bufferless rosters contribute to their fatigue. As many as 84% of respondents expressed concern about the speed and direction in which shifts are rotated. A pilot who asked to remain anonymous says, “That’s what the operators’ new rostering softwares are doing.” They’re optimizers that force pilots to work every minute of their 13-hour timetable, with no breathing space. Any additional pressure, such as unpredictable weather, can easily overwhelm them. It’s not the only issue. The buzz surrounding fatigue management technology has almost completely died down a year after it was hyped up. IndiGo has not provided any updates on the wrist-worn device. IndiGo and the Thales Group did not respond to requests for comment.
