Passengers check flight information board at Kolkata airport.

KOLKATA: Pilots in IndiGo Airlines have questioned how the shortage of 65 captains and 59 co-pilots following the implementation of the revised flight duty time limitation (FDTL) norms could have triggered the cancellation and delays of thousands of flights and alleged that the crisis was engineered to bring the country to its knees and force the govt to put the FDTL norms in abeyance.“IndiGo operates around 2,200 flights a day. It has 2,357 captains on its rolls and 2,194 first officers. Hence, there are 4,551 pilots while the deficit is 124 pilots or 5%. When the new norms came into effect, it should have affected 5-7% of the flights, i.e., 110-150 flights at most. Then why were several hundred flights delayed and cancelled each day?” a veteran pilot pondered.

Others also questioned why IndiGo was allocated hundreds of additional slots in the winter schedule despite knowing that the airline was short of pilots.Pilots allege the crisis that brought India to its knees was engineered to sabotage the rollout of new safety norms.“FDTL exists for the safety of passengers and not for the comfort of pilots. It is to ensure pilots are not fatigued when they have to make decisions that could impact the lives of 180 or more passengers in the aircraft and their families. By forcing the rollback of the revised FDTL norms that were announced two years ago, the airline is putting flight safety at risk. Yet the airline has gone to extraordinary lengths to have its way and put profits before safety,” said Airlines Pilots’ Association of India president Sam Thomas.Sources in IndiGo said SOPs that were meticulously followed to ensure on-time performance consistently over the years were deliberately tweaked to cause delays and trigger chaos so that the new norms were kept in abeyance.So how did the airline engineer the chaos that disrupted the lives of over 1 lakh people daily? Pilots said there have been multiple instances in the past few days in which captains and first officers standing in dispatch were asked not to go to the aircraft. While that was blatant, there were other ways in which crew reporting was delayed.“Usually, there are pilots on standby who are called in when a rostered pilot is unable to report for duty. If a standby is not available, then a pilot who has a day off is requested to fill in. Usually, this call comes 5-6 hours before the departure time. But suddenly, these calls were coming barely 1-2 hours before departure. There have been many instances in which captains have reported 10-15 minutes late but the flight has been delayed by an hour or more because of other factors that were created,” said a pilot.Citing a situation that had unfolded in Kolkata, another pilot said that while he has seen IndiGo planes parked next to each other in remote bays, he had suddenly found the planes parked at different points over the past few days. “If planes are parked in contiguous bays, it facilitates quicker turnaround time as ground crew can service the aircraft simultaneously. Suddenly, we found planes parked in different bays that were far apart. With a speed restriction of 10 kmph in the apron area, it meant more time for the plane to offload passengers and baggage on arrival and more time for refueling and boarding,” the pilot pointed out.While an official inquiry is now underway, the aviation ministry will have to determine whether IndiGo miscalculated, mismanaged, or deliberately let the crisis escalate. An increasing number of pilots are also demanding a forensic investigation into what precipitated the crisis over the past five days and say those behind the design must be prosecuted.