Coronavirus: Asia’s grounded pilots spark airline safety fears over lack of flying practice

Name: Tracking the massive impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the world’s airline industry in early 2020
Uploaded: 2020-12-01T03:00:50.000Z
Duration: 3 min 51 s
Description: Tracking the massive impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the world’s airline industry in early 2020

International aviation traffic is way off pre-pandemic levels because of border restrictions and mandatory quarantine, a big deterrent to travellers

Thousands of pilots have been laid off or furloughed amid the pandemic, and those still in work are flying a lot less because there is so little demand

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Volunteers look for survivors of a Pakistan International Airlines plane that crashed in a residential area of Karachi in this May file photo. Photo: AP

Bloomberg

Published: 11:00am, 1 Dec 2020Updated: 8:17pm, 1 Dec 2020

On September 15, an Indonesian flight carrying 307 passengers and 11 crew to the northern city of Medan momentarily veered off the runway after landing, sparking an investigation by the country’s transport safety regulator. It found the pilot had flown less than three hours in the previous 90 days. The first officer had not flown at all since February 1.

The incident underlines an emerging risk from the coronavirus pandemic: pilots are not getting enough opportunity to fly because airlines have grounded planes and scaled back operations due to a slump in demand for air travel.

In its preliminary report, Indonesia’s National Transportation Safety Committee said the pandemic has made it harder to maintain pilot proficiency and flying experience. The Lion Air aircraft involved was an Airbus SE A330, one of 10 in the carrier’s fleet. Because Lion Air does not have a simulator for the A330, its pilots are trained at third-party facilities in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Covid-19 travel restrictions have made those harder to access.

“Regular flying keeps your mind in the cockpit,” said Mohan Ranganathan, an aviation safety consultant who was an adviser to India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation. “Being away from flying for such a long time brings in some complacency. Add loss of income, uncertainty about jobs or the future of the airline, that brings in additional stress. With an increase in stress levels, proficiency drops.”

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Tracking the massive impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the world’s airline industry in early 2020

Analytics company Cirium says almost one-third of the world’s passenger jets remain in storage – parked in the centre of Australia and the United States’ Mojave Desert. While there has been a recovery in domestic travel in larger markets such as China, international traffic is way off pre-pandemic levels because of border restrictions and mandatory quarantine, a big deterrent to travellers. Thousands of pilots have been laid off or furloughed, and those still in work are flying a lot less because there is so little demand.

Pilot rustiness was also cited by Europe’s top aviation-safety official as a possible factor in the crash of a Pakistan International Airlines plane in Karachi in May that killed all but two of the 99 people on board. Nobody was injured in the Lion Air runway incident.