Air India looking to increase aircraft utilisation

In a bid to address Air India pilots’ complaints on inadequate flying hours, the ministry of civil aviation will soon call a meeting in Mumbai to increase the airline’s aircraft utilisation.

Aircraft utilisation is the average number of hours during each 24-hour period when the aircraft is actually in flight. At present, Air India holds the dubious distinction of having the lowest aircraft utilisation of 9.1 hours everyday.

“Air India badly needs to increase its fleet utilisation so that the pilots get to log more flying hours. There are various requests pending with the airline on Tier II routes and even on the North East sector routes and AI should start flights to those sectors,” said a senior ministry official.

He said that more flights to smaller cities and remote areas are anyway mandated as per the government’s route dispersal guidelines and the ministry would insist on the airline connecting smaller cities.

This follows the recent strike by a section of pilots, who were demanding (among other things) more flying hours which requires more flights per day under the airline’s network. One of the promises made by the government during the strike was that it would periodically review pilots’ demands on such issues.

If Air India’s aircraft utilisation can be increased by two-three hours per day, it will give the airline around 400 extra flying hours to be distributed among 1,500 pilots in the airline.

Recently, around 800 pilots of erstwhile Indian Airlines went on a ten-day strike after demanding an increase in their salaries, which had been impacted because of fall in flying hours. Erstwhile Indian Airlines pilot are paid on the basis of flying hours whereas the erstwhile Air India pilots are paid a fixed pay only to exceed if the pilots fly over 80 hours in a month.