NEW DELHI: The flydubai cockpit attack has renewed attention to pilots’ wellbeing. Indian pilots say long notice periods at domestic airlines add to their stress and make it harder to take jobs abroad.Co-pilots must serve six months’ notice and captains a year’s. Foreign airlines, however, often want recruits to join within three months. Indian pilots hope carriers hiring from here will take that mismatch into account.“We usually don’t hire direct from India and prefer if a pilot has worked in a second country before onboarding them,” a senior official of a leading West Asian airline recently told TOI. The official cited two obstacles: the notice requirement, which remains binding even if an Indian airline fails to pay on time, and informal arrangements with large Indian carriers against recruiting their pilots.
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Some pilots resign before securing another job so they can begin serving notice, a senior official of an Indian airline said. If they find no job abroad, they withdraw the resignation.Pilots have challenged the notice rule in court; the case is pending. The rule was intended to protect flight schedules from sudden mass resignations, but it has “outlived its utility”, one pilot said. He argued that it now chiefly protects airlines struggling to pay their crews.