Chennai: At least five flights from Chennai of the private carrier Jet Airways were cancelled on Thursday and nine flights from Delhi airport on Wednesday following non-availability of pilots to operate them due to suspected pilot trouble brewing in the airline. Sources in Chennai and Delhi airport confirmed the cancellations, which led to severe inconvenience for passengers.
Interestingly, Jet Airways said in a statement on Wednesday that operations across its network have returned to normal, following the resolution of issues caused by the non-availability of an unusually high number of pilots who had reported sick. But the cancellation of 5 flights out of Chennai on Thursday indicates that operations are not yet normal.
Airlines sources indicated that the pilots are reporting sick because of cumulative fatigue due to the employment of the automated national roster optimiser software which the carrier started using from last month. Till recently, the roster for crew was managed manually sector by sector. “If a pilot is based in Chennai, his roster – schedule of flights and rest period - will be decided in Chennai. With the roster optimiser in use now, pilots are asked to fly with minimum prescribed rest and across all sectors, which is resulting in cumulative fatigue,” an insider from the airlines said.
“The software is calculating minimum rest period of 15 hours for domestic flights and 21 hours for international flights and pushing the crews into the next flight,” noted a pilot of Jet Airways, who did not wish to be named. “We are not machines to go to sleep ‘mode’ as soon as we reach hotels in different cities and get ready for the next flight after the stipulated rest hours. Continuous odd hour flight schedules like midnight and early morning departures are taking a toll on the pilots,” the pilot added.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, nine flights out of Chennai including 5 of Jet Airways were cancelled. Two other cancelled flights belonged to Indigo while the other two were of Air India. "Our flight schedule was affected because one of our aircraft which went to Sharjah was stranded there due to a technical snag," Air India sources said.
