Times of India: Mumbai: Wednesday, October 29, 2014.
For over a
year now, flight attendants on Air India (AI) flights to Australia have been
doing an extra hour of duty. The airline has often claimed that it has the
requisite sanction for the extra duty hours put in by its flight attendants,
but a recent RTI reply by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA)
proves the claim false.
The issue
concerns passenger safety as the 10 AI flight attendants on board the
253-seater Boeing 787 aircraft put in 17 hours of flight duty at a go on the
Delhi-Sydney-Melbourne flight.Every day at 1.30 pm, the AI Dreamliner departs
for Sydney on an 11-hour journey. At Sydney, it does an hour-long halt before
it takes off for a four-hour flight to Melbourne. The 10 flight attendants
rostered for the flight report for duty at Delhi airport at noon.DGCA norms put
the flight duty time permitted for flight attendants at 14 hours, extendable to
a maximum of 16 hours.
The extra
hour of duty time has been happening on the flight to Australia since August 30
last year, when the flight was launched.The AI spokesperson reiterated on
Tuesday that the airline had the DGCA sanction and there was no violation.
Only, in an RTI reply on October 10 the DGCA said it had given AI no dispensation,
which means there was no permission to make its flight attendants work beyond
16 hours.
The
spokesperson said AI was gathering information from other carriers on how they
dealt with the fatigue factor of cabin crew on long-haul flights and would take
necessary action based on the inputs received.
Another
violation on the Australia flight is that the aircraft lack bunk beds for the
cabin crew to rest.
.JPG)
.JPG)
