Mumbai: About 63 in 100 Indian pilots were predicted to be sleepy when they land at dawn after the legally permitted longest night duty of 10 hours, according to a review by Safety Matters Foundation, a not-for-profit aviation safety group. The question it attempted to answer was: how many pilots are sleepy as they begin the last landing? For Europe, which has day flights, that number was 16 in 100.The study’s objective was to look at whether India’s rules on pilot working hours keep pilots awake enough to fly safely? “Short answer, by day, mostly yes. At night and late in the evening, often not,” it said, adding that a duty can follow every roster rule and yet leave most of the crew sleepy.The review does not say flying in India is unsafe, or that any pilot was unsafe. Its author, founder Capt Amit Singh FRAeS, said the findings match what pilots have long reported. “Indian pilots have told us, survey after survey, that they are too tired to fly,” Capt Singh said. “The science explains why. India’s rules leave the late evening open, allow a 13-hour day without asking when it starts, and file most fatigue reports away as ‘perceived’. The rules count the hours. The body counts the clock.”The foundation’s surveys of Indian pilots, 542 respondents in 2022 and 530 in 2024, point the same way, 71 in 100 said they had often been too tired for cockpit duty, and 66 in 100 reported unplanned sleep or microsleeps on duty.India handles deep night well, said the release issued by the Foundation. Duties touching midnight to 6 a.m. are limited to 10 hours and two landings. By day, however, the picture changes. “India allows 13 hours as a routine day, for any start up to 10.30am, with no extra safeguard.” A day ending just before midnight may include six landings, and on a legal day landing at 11.30pm, 55 to 77 in 100 pilots are predicted to be sleepy.“Two forces drive tiredness. From the moment you wake, sleep pressure builds like a phone battery draining, only sleep recharges it. Separately, the body clock raises and lowers alertness like a tide, lowest between about 2am and 6am. Night flying combines a flat battery with a low tide. And when sleep is cut short night after night, the shortfall carries over, like a debt,” the study said.The foundation urged three changes: duty limits set by start time, penalty-free fatigue reporting with an independent study of pilot sleep and alertness, and publication of the evidence behind every exemption, with an end date.
