KOCHI: The Air India Express, the low-cost airline subsidiary of Air India, is set to reschedule its night flight services with the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) introducing new norms for pilots’ duty time.The airline will reschedule most of its night flight services from February 2012. Headquartered in Kochi, most of Air India Express flights serve the gulf region with a majority of them currently departing at late evening between 7 p.m and 9 p.m. AI Express operates 195 weekly flights, most of them from Kerala. “It does not mean that we are going to cancel any of our flights, we are just rescheduling the time to comply with DGCA regulations,” said S Chandrakumar, chief operating officer, of the airline. Since we have bookings till January we don’t want to change the schedule now which would result in inconvenience to passengers. Besides, the DGCA norm will come in place only in February,” Chandrakumar said.However, he agreed that the new schedule might cause inconvenience for those who return after leave. “At the same time, the revised schedule would be convenient for those coming back home,” he said.The DGCA’s rules on flight duty time limitation for cockpit crew will come into effect from February. For the first time, the DGCA has specified pilot duty hours when flying during the Window of Circadian Law (WOCL). The WOCL is the period from 2 a.m to 6 a.m., a time when the alertness of human mind and body is much lower than at other times of the day. Under the new rules, the total duty time of a pilot gets reduced by a certain margin in case he or she operates a flight during this period. Also, the new rules have restrictions on deputing pilots on consecutive night duties.“The departure time of our flights will be advanced. For example, the departure at 8 p.m. will be advanced to 5 p.m. so that the flights can fly back and reach India almost before 12. Besides, there will be more direct flights as part of time management,” Chandrakumar said.
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