Airlines believe they have a solution to the fatigue crisis: technology. IndiGo, India’s largest airline, has announced that it will be the “first adopter” of a wrist-worn fatigue monitoring device it is developing with French defense and space company Thales Group. The device can provide “detailed information on demographics, including routes, pairings, crew profiles and more, going beyond traditional schedule-focused biomathematical models,” the airline said in a September press release. The airline, which operates 2,000 flights a day and employs more than 5,000 pilots, said the device would be launched after a proof-of-concept trial. No release date has been announced.
Wearable activity trackers are not new to the aviation industry. IndiGo’s device sounds similar to the Actiwatch, a now-discontinued line of research actigraphs from Philips used to monitor sleep patterns, study circadian rhythms and track physical activity as part of the airline’s fatigue risk management system. But they partly rely on performance tests and subjective measures such as self-reporting, which often lead to airlines being targeted, says Captain CS Randhawa, president of the Federation of Indian Pilots. Safety management systems are generally overlooked by operators and seen as an additional cost, says Captain Amit Singh of the NGO Safety Matters Foundation.
In May 2023 Air India has launched safety management software called Coruson, as well as BAM (Boeing Alertness Model), a fatigue reduction tool integrated into its roster system, which is used by airlines to create and manage pilot schedules. Coruson, developed by cloud software company Ideagen, centralizes, analyzes and reports safety-related data – such as incidents, hazards and risk assessments. BAM, developed jointly by Boeing and software company Jeppesen, predicts and manages pilot fatigue by analyzing flight schedules and performance data. These tools are designed to prevent the creation of tiresome rosters and pairings, Air India CEO Campbell Wilson noted in an internal memo to employees. The carrier also introduced two new digital tools for its crew – the Pilot Sector Report app to help pilots easily submit information on flight performance, incidents and post-flight observations; and DocuNet, a digital management system that facilitates the storage, retrieval and sharing of documents (such as flight manuals, training records and compliance documents).
Despite these measures, the airline was fined by the DGCA in March this year for violating FDTL restrictions and fatigue management rules. This May, Air India Express cabin crew called in sick en masse to protest “mismanagement”. This followed a similar protest by the crew, mostly pilots, of Vistara airline. Both Air India and Vistara are now owned by one of India’s largest conglomerates, the Tata Group, which took over the former from the Indian government in January 2022.
