Fears over air safety if Air India pilots are replaced

MUMBAI: The news that civil aviation minister Ajit Singh is exploring the option of terminating the jobs of a majority of Air India pilots and hiring fresh recruits has alarmed many in the airline industry who fear that flight safety will suffer. The AI pilots have been striking for the past month.
Air India recently put out advertisements calling for pilots trained on Boeing aircraft.So far the airline has terminated over 100 pilots and, according to sources, termination letters are being sent to many more.
Capt Manoj Hathi, ex-Air India director of operations and flight safety and an examiner/instructor on Boeing 747-400, categorically said that replacing 400-odd "company-experienced pilots" with fresh recruits could have repercussions on flight safety. "In the 1960s, Japan Airlines replaced its American pilots with Japanese pilots with minimal experience on jets. They had a large number of American pilots and replacing them en masse was a bad decision as the airline had more than half-a-dozen accidents in the next nine years, all attributed to lack of experience, training and pilot error,'' said Hathi.
He said there were numerous, serious CRM (Cockpit Crew Resource Management) issues the airline would face in training the new recruits. CRM covers factors like interpersonal communication between pilots, human error and so on -- all vital requirements to ensure flight safety in a multi-crew aircraft.
"All airlines follow different Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) to standardize pilots. As a matter of interest, even Indian airline and Air India follow different SOPs. Having a mixed crew in a cockpit increases the probability of CRM failure," he added. Hathi said that Air India's operations and flight safety custodians must give serious thought to unilaterally replacing company-trained and well-experienced pilots. "There is just no short cut to experience," he added.
Air India executive pilots also fear that the move could have air safety implications. An executive pilot, who wished to remain unnamed, said: "Which airline in the world would let go 400 experienced pilots and recruit fresh ones, only to spend considerable time and money on their training, pay them double the salary if they are foreign pilots and in the end operate flights that have a high risk of getting involved in an incident or accident because of CRM failure?"
Said another commander who is also an instructor: "With fresh recruits, there is always the possibility of their past airline training rearing its head unexpectedly during an emergency, when split-second decisions need to be taken. It can be disastrous when two pilots take action based on two different SOPs,'' he added.
A section of Air India pilots who operate flights to the US, Europe, Far East and Middle East have been on strike for over a month now. They have demanded equal opportunity to career progression as their Indian airline counterparts.
Executive pilots feel strain
Air India's executive pilots who have been working to their full capacity for the past month to fill in for the absent pilots have started feeling the strain. About 15 to 20 executive pilots have called in sick in the last few days, apparently in protest against the airline management's failure to resolve the issue. Two executive pilots resigned in the last two days, sources added. An airline spokesperson did not comment on the developments.