Is Knowing When To Rest The Most Overlooked Skill In Flying?

Anirban Ghosh* felt a tap on his shoulder.

“Are you okay?” his fellow crew member asked. Ghosh, a 42-year-old Akasa Air pilot, realised he had been asleep for about a minute, maybe a minute-and-a-half. It was somewhere over eastern India, on the Kolkata-Mumbai sector stretch in the night.

The pilot, who has logged years in airline operations, remembers clearly how his co-pilot took immediate action and told him to “sleep it off”. What followed was controlled rest—a regulated 40-minute cockpit nap permitted on flights over three hours in the cruise phase, according to existing aviation rules, to avoid sleep inertia.

“Just take half an hour and sleep. That nap would help you to manage yourself and plan your descent into Mumbai safely. Because that’s when you need to be your most active, and I need you at your controls 100 percent,” Ghosh’s colleague told him.

The question of how much rest pilots need came into sharp focus after recent chaos left IndiGo passengers stranded at airports across India. A slew of new rules, introduced in 2024, in the Civil Aviation Requirements (CAR) sets out to enforce it including, first, a 15-hour break between flights, and second, a resting period of 48 hours from the previous 36 hours, and finally, the cutting down of nighttime landings from six to two. The new updates also include an extension of the nighttime cap by an hour to 6am from the previous 5am.

On paper, the changes look decisive. But what does it actually mean for pilots to fly beyond duty hours—not just in terms of safety, but in the lived reality of the job? And is knowing when to rest one of the most overlooked skills in flying?

FLIGHT CLUB

Ghosh’s experience is neither unusual nor isolated. Controlled rest, or in-seat napping, are considered a safety net for unexpected fatigue or microsleep mid-air.

Akash Kapoor*, a 36-year-old IndiGo pilot with a similar career flying time, describes fatigue as a “silent killer”. “Even the best, most experienced pilots can be affected. It has nothing to do with skill; it can hit anyone.”

The sedentary nature of the job leaves pilots vulnerable to disruptions in their natural sleep–wake cycles, leading to fatigue. Even when pilots operate within legal flying limits, irregular rosters, early starts, night duties and frequent schedule changes can severely disrupt sleep—a fact many international reports have corroborated. One large academic global survey from 2021 found that nearly three-quarters of pilots reported high or severe fatigue, alongside notable levels of sleep difficulties and stress. Similar patterns are being reported in India: a 2024 survey by the Safety Matters Foundation, an independent aviation think tank, which included responses from 530 pilots, found that long duty hours, rapidly rotating rosters, and limited recovery time led to widespread daytime sleepiness.

Nearly 70 percent of pilots felt that more than 10 hours of flight duty profoundly influenced the onset of fatigue. Even more—83 percent—cited consecutive nightly flights as a reason for increased fatigue.

According to the pilots Esquire India spoke to, “flight time”—the metric airlines are bound by— only accounts for the moment an aircraft starts moving until it comes to a complete stop. It excludes the hours spent commuting through city traffic, preparing for flights, positioning between cities, waiting out delays or being held at airports long after a flight is cancelled. The result is a strange arithmetic where pilots may officially fly 35-40 hours a month but remain on duty for over 20 days, losing out on precious circadian sleep.

As Ghosh explains, a month may show only 35-40 hours of flying, but that same month can involve working 23 or 24 days, often across early mornings and late nights. “That’s only flying,” he says. “From the time the aircraft starts moving till the aircraft comes to stop at the end of the flight is what is counted as a flight time.” Everything else—the hours that bookend the flight—is invisible.

Consecutive early reports mean waking up at 2am or 3am multiple days in a row. While regulations may prevent two consecutive “night duties” on paper, the body still loses its most critical rest window. “Your natural sleep window, from around 2am to 6am, is often denied to you,” the pilot explains.

Even after touching down, fatigue doesn’t vanish. “When I am tired after a long day of work, I want to come back home, have a meal, take a short walk, maybe watch some TV, or just sit still and do nothing,” Kapoor explains. Ghosh adds that over four or five days, muscle memory, critical thinking and even speech can begin to deteriorate. “Your brain needs rest, your body needs rest… sometimes you’re not even in the zone to speak to anyone for a while. It takes 30-40 minutes just to come back into yourself,” says Kapoor.

The Air India Boeing 787 tragedy in June 2025 brought renewed attention to pilots’ mental health, underscoring how fatigue takes a toll not just on their minds, but on their social lives as well. “Chronic stress negatively impacts cognitive abilities. Sleep-deprived pilots struggle to think clearly, make decisions quickly, and respond to unexpected events. Memory, vigilance and reaction time all suffer,” says Dr Nikita Bhati, senior clinical psychologist at Samarpan Health, a Mumbai-based counselling and wellness centre. “Over time, fatigue can seep into emotional and social life too, manifesting as irritability, anxiety or even withdrawal from loved ones.”

Which is why leaving worries on the ground, before stepping onto the aircraft, is crucial. Ghosh says switching off his phone and just focusing on the immediate task of flying are some personal rituals that help maintain focus and manage anxiety. Pilots around the world follow such practices, whatever might help.

ON A WING AND A PRAYER

Airlines have systems to monitor and manage pilot fatigue, allowing them to file fatigue reports when they feel too tired to operate safely. Theoretically, these should trigger adjustments—rescheduling flights, swapping crews or granting additional rest.

But that might not always be the ground reality. “We are at a time when pilots are afraid of sanctions and subsequent termination of employment. They prefer to board the aircraft tired and hope that the fatigue will not affect the safety of the flight adversely,” Dr Bhati explains, adding that they don’t realise that most of it is treatable. “Pilots also may not seek help for fear of losing their license, or because of the stigma associated with mental illness.” As a result, pilots push through tiredness, often on a wing and a prayer.

Ghosh shares that his employer has a positive outlook towards fatigue report. He says they aren’t treated as isolated incidents but pooled together to identify patterns and reduce the risk of recurrence. “We call it a pattern. If a route or roster is flown six or seven times in a month, a pattern can emerge within that month. If it’s flown less often, it may take three or four months. But it’s entirely report-based, because with so many pilots involved, trends only become clear over time,” he says.

Kapoor, however, feels fatigue reports are a façade. “They say that you should report openly, but it is never taken in a good way,” he claims. “If you report fatigue, initially, it’s taken from your account of sick leaves—which are only a few in a year.” He also notes that though many pilots avoid showing up when fatigued, those that don’t do so under pressure from airlines. And after hearing reports of other carriers penalising pilots for reporting sick often.

Without singling out a particular operator, aviation expert and CEO, Avialaz Consultants, Sanjay Lazar says that fatigue reports across airlines in India are seldom treated “too kindly”. “They mark you sick and dock your leaves or cut your flights. That’s the problem. A lot of work needs to be done there. Airlines developing their own system somehow doesn’t work. You need the DGCA to be monitoring it,” says Lazar.

He adds that reports need to be accepted for what they are. “You can’t punish somebody for being fatigued. They’re not sick… you’ve got to understand that it’s a symptom of the hectic flying that they are doing. It’s a symptom of the crew not feeling comfortable to operate a wide body or a big aircraft with 100, 200, 300 lives,” he says.

Elsewhere in the world, management of pilot fatigue has moved away from rigid hour-counting, towards recognising human limits. In Europe and other ICAO-aligned jurisdictions, night curfews, protected rest windows and non-punitive fatigue reporting systems are built into operations. There is acknowledgement that alertness cannot be legislated by numbers alone. The emphasis, as aviation regulators now frame it, is on staying within limits and identifying and managing fatigue as a safety risk before it reaches the cockpit.

Consider this: the Safety Matters Foundation report found that 83 percent of surveyed pilots cited consecutive night flights as a key contributor to fatigue. “Almost three-quarters of the world doesn’t fly at night. You take the UK, Europe: there is a night curfew from 10pm onwards,” Lazar says. India, by contrast, continues to operate through the graveyard shift, he adds. “Pilots wake up at 1 or 2am and fly out because we want to land in UK or Europe or the US early in the morning.” He believes the current situation could improve once the new DGCA rules are implemented across the board in India.

Duty-bound aviators are, however, cautiously optimistic. Kapoor emphasises the basics—sound sleep, a balanced diet and regular physical activity—as essential to flying safely over the long term.

He also believes change is within reach. “The rules are very good—they were much needed, especially after what’s happened in the past few years,” he adds. “Implementation is taking time, but I’m hopeful. The new rules will give us more rest—which is essential not just for safety, but for our wellbeing.”

*Names have been changed at the interviewees’ request

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