Air India pilots fly beyond their time limit to get Indians home from US

Air India pilots flying AI 126(Chicago- Delhi) and AI 174 (San Francisco to Delhi) decided to go beyond their flying time limits (FDTL) to avoid inconvenience to passengers and cost to the company, AI Pilots’ union said

Closure of the Afghanistan airspace on Monday led to flight cancellations and diversions. Two Air India flights from the United States that would have normally used Afghanistan air space to arrive in Delhi had to be re-routed and made to halt in the UAE due to fuel considerations. The two flights carrying roughly 600 passengers finally landed in Delhi only a few hours behind schedule since the pilots chose to work beyond their flight duty time limit (FDTL).

Two Air India flights from the US were among those that had to be diverted due to closure of air space over Afghanistan. (Satyabrata Tripathy/HT Photo)

According to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the flying time limit or the FDTL allows a pilot only one landing in a long haul flight. However, Air India pilots flying AI 126(Chicago- Delhi) and AI 174 (San Francisco to Delhi) decided to go beyond it to avoid inconvenience to passengers and cost to the company, AI Pilots’ union said.

“The regulator leaves it to the operating pilots to take a call. It is only on a voluntary basis that the pilots operate beyond their time limit. No one can force them to compromise their FDTL,” an ex DGCA official explained that only the pilots of the two airlines were in a position to extend their FDTLs.

Officials aware of the development said the flight from Chicago was informed about Afghanistan airspace being closed late, due to which, it diverted to Sharjah just before entering the Afghan airspace.

“However, the flight from San Francisco that landed in Sharjah at around 3pm was given the information on time,” the official said. “The Chicago flight, after being refuelled, took off for Delhi after around three hours and the other flight from the US was in Sharjah for over an hour,” he added.

A senior official from the airline said the pilots must have considered the fact that taking a break and obeying their FDTL would only cause complications. “If the pilots would have not taken the decision to fly beyond their FDTLs, then it would have not only cost the airline more (since the passengers would have to be accommodated in UAE) but also inconvenienced the passengers,” he said.

While the flight from Chicago landed in Delhi at 6.15pm, the San Francisco flight that was ideally to land in Delhi at 3pm, landed at around 7.40pm.

Air India’s Boeing pilots’ union tweeted, “To avoid major inconvenience to the passengers and cost to the company, they opted to extend their FDTL and safely operated another sector. Over 24 hours in uniform, they landed safely in #Delhi. All in a day’s work for @airindiain pilots. The closure of #kabulairport and #Afghanistan airspace caused major disruption. Kudos to our member pilots and the crew of AI126. With limited time to react and with inadequate fuel for Delhi they managed a diversion to #Sharjah.”