New Roster Software Issues Hinder Operations At Air India Express, Over 50 Flights Affected: Report

The report cited several pilots along with the crew of the airline and said that the carrier is manually assigning duties to the employees and setting the staff schedule

Problems for Air India Express (AIX) don’t seem to be ending anytime soon. After dealing with flight cancellations and disruptions for earlier this month, the carrier is finding it difficult to resume operations smoothly due to problems with its crew management software, media reports said.

According to a report by The Economic Times, the carrier is facing glitches in its new roster management software and multiple crew members are being forced to manually register for their duties. The report cited several pilots along with the crew of the airline and said that the carrier is manually assigning duties to the employees and setting the staff schedule.

This has affected 50 out of the overall 300 daily flights operated by the Tata-owned airline. Other carriers of the conglomerate, namely Vistara and Air India, have been providing their help by operating nearly 20 extra flights on a daily basis.

Another crew member noted that they have been manually filling their locations in Google Sheets which are being used to feed data into the new software to make the roster for the upcoming month. 

V S Rajkumar, Chief Of Operations, said, “Many of us are putting in extra hours calling up our colleagues and locating them so that they can be assigned flights,” the report stated. 

Notably, the carrier saw over 100 flight cancellations earlier in May as several crew members applied for mass sick leave to protest against the alleged mismanagement by the airline. 

The new scheduling software, provided by CAE Group, was implemented by the carrier on May 5, the report noted. 

Citing a spokesperson for the airline, the report said, “The recent cancellations, which account for about 5-8 per cent of our daily flights, were primarily due to the cascading impact of an unauthorised mass sick reporting by a section of our crew members. This unfortunate and unexpected event coincided with our transition to a more sophisticated crew scheduling software. This resulted in a longer-than-expected stabilisation period.”