If pilots strike, AI and KFA can use foreign planes and crew

New Delhi: If you work for an airline in India and decide to strike work for non-payment of salaries or any other issue, your employer may well learn to fly without you.

In a long-awaited decision, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), the aviation regulator, has notified a new rule which allows scheduled airlines to go in for ‘wet leases’ of aircraft which can seat up to 70 people. Put simply, this means they can import aircraft (small ones upto ATRs) registered in another country where crew, maintenance and aircraft insurance is provided by the aircraft lessor. In the new Civil Aviation Requirements (CAR) on leasing of aircraft, DGCA has allowed wet leasing for six months whereas earlier it was only granted for three months, extendable by another three months.

[caption id=“attachment_495396” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Airlines can import aircraft (small ones upto ATRs) registered in another country where crew, maintenance and aircraft insurance is provided by the aircraft lessor. [/caption]

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Also, the new CAR takes into account numerous objections raised by the home ministry earlier on security checks needed on foreign crew which would work in India under a wet lease as well as on foreign aircraft. It requires pilots and engineers under wet lease to get security clearance by the home ministry and says that DGCA may stipulate additional requirements considered necessary for safe operation of aircraft in India which must be complied with before the aircraft is imported here.

The CAR mentioned industrial unrest as one of the reasons when DGCA may allow an airline to go in for wet leases. Since crew and other facilities come with the aircraft, an airline may decide that wet leasing is an ideal solution for those periods when it faces industrial unrest - like the recent strike by long-haul pilots of Air India which crippled its international operations, or the ongoing trouble at Kingfisher Airlines, where staff agitation has grounded flights since the first of October.

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So will Kingfisher seize this opportunity provided by the DGCA and actually go for wet leasing aircraft to begin skeletal operations?

A senior official in the Ministry of Civil Aviation told Firspost that rules have been relaxed for wet leasing since it would help not only those carriers which face employee unrest but also those who are sick and need to continue operations. Also it would allow airlines to maintain schedules if an aircraft is grounded on technical reasons.

Not just Air India and Kingfisher, but the new rules may also help operators like Deccan Charters. Promoted by Captain GR Gopinath, who pioneered the low-cost airline concept in India, this company was denied permission to wet lease ATRs last year by the then DGCA, EK Bharat Bhushan, who said non-scheduled operators (NSOP) are not permitted to import ATRs (Deccan had filed for permission to operate as an NSOP). Now that Gopinath wants to launch a scheduled airline, the easier wet lease norms could help it get off the ground.

Yet another point the DGCA has clarified in this CAR is about the age of the aircraft - no aircraft older than 15 years would be permitted to be leased into India, the CAR said. This puts at rest a debate over allowing older aircraft, which had arisen when reports emerged about the DGCA considering such a proposal earlier this year