The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) is unlikely to extend the June 1 deadline for the airlines to implement the new flight duty time limitation (FDTL) norms, government officials said on Tuesday.
A few days back, Federation of Indian Airlines — which comprises IndiGo, Air India, Vistara and SpiceJet — wrote a letter to the regulator asking it to defer the deadline by one year as about 25 per cent more pilots would be needed to implement the new norms. The airlines said that they won’t be able to hire and train these many pilots by June 1.
