Before Air India crash, the rising demand for traveling on Indian pilots has put

Copyright © HT Digital Streams Limit all rights reserved. Shan Li, The Wall Street Journal 5 min Read 26 Aug 2025, 01:47 IST Air India Check-in desks at London Gatwick Airport are closed after the accident. (AFP/Getty Images) Summary A tree in travel in India meant that pilots often allowed the maximum hours to fly, sometimes with insufficient rest. Prior to a deadly collapse of the Air India in June, a decades travel boom in India created a lack of pilot that stretched many pilots, according to individual pilots, the National Pilots Union and court documents submitted by the Union. Over the past six years, India’s pilots have filed several petitions to ask for better working conditions, with courts saying that Indian Airlines – which has rising demand for the rising demand – forced pilots to fly the maximum allowable hours and often provided insufficient rest between shifts. Shortly after the collapse of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner who killed 260 people, Air India in voluntary revelations told the authorities that it had long -term flights, failed to give the crew sufficient rest periods and that pilots could fly without the necessary training. Air India did not respond to a request for comment on why it reported the offenses. Neither the airline nor the regulator announced the number of hours the two pilots worked before the accident. India’s aviation regulator, the Civil Aviation Directorate General, threatened Air India last month with enforcement action for violating regulations on training and the prevention of fatigue, according to the government notices seen by the Wall Street Journal. Air India said it received the notices and was in conversation with the DGCA. The continued investigation into the accident in the Indian city of Ahmedabad did not show the pilot’s tribe as a factor. India’s Bureau of Aircraft Crash, which leads the investigation, said in his preliminary report that switches that control the fuel to the two engines of the aircraft were moved to the off position. Although the switches were moved to the OP position again, the engines apparently could not recover. The Journal reported earlier that details of the Cockpit vote proposed that it was the captain who turned off the switches while the co-pilot flew the plane. The pilot union said it would accept the conclusion of the investigation. Investigators did not give a reason why the switches were turned off, whether the law was coincidental or intentional. The AAB of India said in July that it is too early to draw any definite conclusions. Air India CEO has warned to draw “premature conclusions”. The Association of the Aviation Pilots of India did not recognize the possibility of pilot action in the accident, but the union asked the authorities to investigate the issue of pilot fatigue. “We are not machines, we are people,” said Anil Rao, a pilot and general secretary of the Union. Flights from India have jumped almost 80% over a decade to 1.3 million in 2024, as Indians switched from bus and train journey. India has more than doubled its airports to over 150 in a decade. In March, Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu said India will have to rent 30,000 pilots in the next two decades, more than fourfold the 7,000 pilots working today. To meet the question, Indian Airlines is on a purchase. Last year, Airlines received 108 new aircraft, with another 739 aircraft on order for the next five years. Air India alone ordered almost 600 new aircraft in 2023 and 2024. Indian regulations allow international flights to be manned with two pilots up to ten hours. On US carriers, international flights that last more than eight hours need at least three pilots. According to the DGCA regulations, commercial pilots in India are limited to 35 hours of flying within a successive seven-day period, and 100 hours within 28 consecutive days. Pilots in the US are limited within 32 hours within a seven -day and 100 -day period in a calendar month. Both are limited to 300 hours within a period of 90 days and 1000 hours for 365 consecutive days. But in interviews, Rao and six other pilots said that airlines regularly press pilots to effect the maximum allowable number of hours – using the shells as a target, not a ceiling – which, according to them, contributes to fatigue. “The limits are intended for maximum situations, not the everyday scheduling,” Rao said. “But airlines use it every day.” It is similar to driving a car every day with maximum velocity, he added. India’s Airlines Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Friends of Sumeet Sabharwal, captain of the doomed Air India flight, said he felt too much work after the state-owned airline was privatized four years ago and bought by Tata Group, a control company related to one of India’s largest conglomerates. The airline began to change pilot schedules more frequently, six pilots said in interviews. It pulled Sabharwal away from his duties as primary caretaker for his sick father, his friends said. In a statement, a spokeswoman for Air India said that the airline strictly complies with all regulations and that its pilots “fly well within the allowable limits” set by regulators. In 2019, hundreds of pilots filed a joint petition with the Delhi High Court requesting better working hours and longer rest for pilots. The court ruled in favor of the petition and ordered the regulator to change the rules for pilot work conditions. The court told the pilot groups to hammer the changes with the regulator and that the new rules should be fully implemented by November. The proposed changes include an increase in weekly rest periods from 36 hours to 48 hours and restrictions on landings that pilots can do during night service. However, the pilot union has complained that some of the proposed changes of the regulator actually reduce the rest and include vague language instead of clear guidelines. Rao said many of the guidelines are open to interpretation by the airline. For example, the 48 -hour weekly rest should be in addition to and not instead of the standard two days that most businesses give employees, he said. But the rules do not make it clear. “It left many gray areas,” Rao said. Experts in the industry said the changes would not be enough to counteract the big demand as Indian Airlines continues to expand. The DGCA did not respond to requests for comment. 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