The loco pilots who have been on a warpath against the delay in filling up the loco pilot vacancies in the railway along with raising demands of better labour reforms including rational duty hours and scientific roster planning, asked the railways to draw a lesson from the recent IndiGo crisis, which crippled air travel across the country.
In a representation to the Indian Railways, the All India Loco Running Staff Association (AILRSA) flagged the issue of crew fatigue and long overdue reforms in the crew management of the trains.
“Whether in the skies or on the rails, crew fatigue directly translates into dangers to passenger safety. Regulations based on modern sleep science are not mere “union demands” to skip from duty. But, they are demands of “safety standards,” said the representation.
Speaking to The Hindu, P.N. Soman, central working committee member, AILRSA, said the railways should learn from the present aviation crisis. Unlike aviation sector, millions of passengers are carried by the railways daily and the passengers depend more on the alertness of loco pilots of the railways where technical advancement is far inferior to aviation sector.
“We have been holding protests marches and strikes over the years demanding a scientifically-designed working atmosphere for the loco pilots, including a maximum of two continuous night duties, rational duty hours aligned with human physiology, proper and adequate rest after every duty and weekly rest, and roster planning based on sleep science, etc. Further, the railways have reduced the eligibility of weekly rest (periodic rest of 30 hours) to 48 from 52 in a year. This periodic rest even consists of 16 hours of daily rest after the work, said Mr. Soman.
The unlawful curtailment of daily rest was prohibited by the High Court of Karnataka in 2010, but to no avail. Just like in aviation, safety is being compromised because labour reforms are seen as a burden, not a necessity, said the representation. The Indian Railways have a sanctioned loco pilot strength of 1.47 lakh, whereas the current strength is around 1.15 lakh, a shortfall of over 30,000 loco pilots. Though the Railways have recently started the process to fill these vacancies, it will take time to complete the process, said Mr. Soman.
The urgent need of the hour is to adopt a modern Fatigue Risk Management System (FRMS)-based framework, which the Centre adopted in 2023 and notified revised Flight Duty Time Limitations (FDTL) which was to come into effect from November 2025, for loco pilots with 6 hours daily duty limit along with adoption of circadian-science based crew rosters, limiting continuous night-duties to two, predictable rest periods with 16 hours after every duty and weekly rest in addition to daily rest, and fatigue-risk modelling in crew scheduling etc, said the representation.
Published – December 08, 2025 09:00 pm IST
