It’s official now. After suggesting initial draft rules, aviation regulator DGCA has now gone ahead and issued orders to airlines stipulating that one of the pilots can sleep in the cockpit at a time during a flight with a minimum duration of three hours. The DGCA has referred to the practice as “controlled rest” and has stipulated that this “shall not be longer than 40 minutes.”
“Controlled rest on the flight deck is an effective fatigue mitigation tool for flight crews and is a way of managing unavoidable excessive tiredness in-flight. This involves the use of short sleep periods (naps) by one pilot during low workload phase of the cruise segment ...,” the DGCA has said, adding, “It is observed that short sleep periods of only 25 minutes can improve performance for hours afterwards.” “Controlled rest shall be used on a flight sector with a minimum duration of three hours. ... Only one flight crew (pilot) must take controlled rest at the discretion of the Pilot-in-Command (PIC) and at a time in his/her operating seat. ... Controlled rest shall commence after reaching top of climb (TOC) and will terminate 30 minutes before planned top of descent. Controlled rest shall not be longer than 40 minutes with another 20 minutes for operational orientation before resuming flight deck duties ... The resting pilot shall keep his seat belt and harnesses fastened and move the seat aft to such a position that unintentional interference with the controls is minimised. The non-resting pilot must not leave his seat for any reason including physiological breaks ... On flight sectors longer than three hours, subject to the conditions above, flight crew may take more than one rest period,” the DGCA has stipulated.
The DGCA has also ordered that during controlled rest, the non-resting pilot must “be able to exercise control of the aircraft at all times and maintain full situation awareness of his surroundings” and that “the autopilot and auto-thrust systems shall be operational”.
The DGCA has also ordered that in such a scenario, the cabin crew should be made aware that one of the pilots will take controlled rest and “must establish a frequent check on the flight crew by means of the interphone system”.