Well, I don't drink, but I'll certainly buy you a beer and swap stories.
You wouldn't have to worry about me doing zero zero takeoffs where not needed. I like to see what I'm hitting.
I'm not questioning your particular interpretation of the regulation, nor am I suggesting that you personally would push a crew beyond the legal (or safe) limits. We've known each other long enough on these boards that I'm sure you know that, too.
Several years ago I worked for a man who has been in the business for a long time. An issue regarding this same subject came up, and while it's not even debatable, it drifted to tail-end ferry flights. The owner of the company made a stand, and I observed that his viewpoint didn't concur with the regulation.
"Don't tell me about the regulation!" he bellowed, and he slammed his fist down on the table. "I wrote the regulation!"
I wasn't really expecting that. Perhaps a spin on how he interpreted it, maybe. But wrote the regulation?
"I'm sorry, I think I misheard. Did you say you wrote the Code of Federal Regulations?"
"That's right, when I was in the Army. I wrote them. When the FAA wants to understand a regulation, they come to me!"
Army? FAR's? FAA? Too wierd...but when it comes to employers "interpreting" the regulation, I've heard it all, or most of it (I think). Not too long ago I knew an operator who advised crews to keep flying into Aspen after dark. The crews said they couldn't, it wasn't permitted in the GOM, nor the procedures for the airport. No problem, said the DO...just don't talk to anyone, don't file IFR, just go VFR and speak to no one. Pick up the passengers and then skedaddle.
Last winter in another part of the world a US operator and a Canadian operator told me that their job was to get me to agree to things, and my job to some degree was to resist. Whatever pressure I couldn't resist was legitimate in their eyes..."we got you to do it, so it must be okay." I fixed that right away...pressure put on by an employer is always a red flag that says "stop right there." Hold the phone. Shut down the show until we get this sorted out.
I'm all for working with the company. After all, that's who is paying my wage. When I accept a wage, or agree to do a job, I throw myself at it 100%, and I will work hard to find a way to make something happen. That said, when the need for something to happen is greatest, the need for caution is always greatest, too. You don't get lift without drag, you don't get light without shadows, you will never see a single sided coin, and urgency demands caution.
An employer does not have the right to interpret the regulation. An employer has the right to approach the person with the final authority regarding the flight, the Pilot in Command, with a viewpoint, but it is the PIC who will make the final decision. It is the PIC who risks his certificate, his career, and his life. It is the PIC who is entrusted with the ultimate choice, and by default, the ultimate interpretation of the regulation, insofar as he or she elects to follow it.
Legal to start, legal to finish is an incomplete thought. It's a little like saying that if you have enough fuel to start the trip, you have enough fuel to finish. That's not true; it really depends on what you did during the trip. You may be completely out of fuel long before the destination, if you had to hold, divert, fly low etc. Legal to start does not mean legal to finish, as there are far too many extenuating circumstances that can intervene in the course of the day (or night as the case may be).
Certainly I have reached the end of my 14 hours, and pressed on. I have been at the airport, or in a hospital, waiting on a heart team which is extracting the organ for immediate transport. Am I going to tell them to waste the heart and insist on my rest? Probably not. I've done it, I've gone past my "duty" and rest times to make that happen. I don't believe for a minute that any overzealous inspector will dare push me on that one, and if he does, then he's probably political mincemeat, because I'll mop the floor with what's left of his career when I'm done.
Conversely, I'll not hesitate to make the opposite decision in the interest of safety. Some years ago, with a heart team on board, we turned back at the destination due to changes in weather and circumstance. We made the determination that it wasn't in our interests with respect to safety, to land, and wait out the heart harvest in freezing fog at the end of the NDB approach in the mountains. Our choice, nobody questioned it...one we didn't make lightly,either. Again, duty or any other issue, including a life at stake, should never compromise safety; you may be tired and unable or unwilling to press on at less than your 14 hours, you may be able to do something legally but not safely, and the answer is, and always should be, an unequivocal, emphatic, "NO!"
In between, I have been on duty as part of an organ harvest (I use medical flights here as an example of some degree of urgency to the mission, though it could just as easily apply to flying airbags for cars, tires, passengers, or a parcel of poodles to poughkeepsie) in which delays during the day made clear the fact that we were going to exceed our rest intervals. On one particular occasion, requirements to fly back and forth with additional tissue samples and fluid samples for crossmatching and compatbility tests (or whatever they did, I'm not a doctor) stretched the day out. In the end, we called in a second airplane and a second crew and retired ourselves for the day to ensure no interruuption in service, and to ensure we wouldn't run over our times.
I've had to tell clients that they are going to need to get a hotel room for the night...we're out of time. We've pushed the ragged edges, we told them what would happen, they had to make that last business dinner, and when their day was and they wanted to fly home...guess what? Ours was done too, and we were staying put. We were legal to start, but we were not legal to finish, nor were we going to attempt to do so. And while we could have finagled paperwork to show that ten hours had elapsed on the ground while waiting for the client, we didn't...we didn't get rested, and it wasn't prospective, and we weren't going to play games with the regulation. Legal to start didn't mean legal to finish, and there was no good reason to make that flight that couldn't wait until morning. The client got billed the extra six hundred for the crew overnight, we went home the next day, life's like that.
Legal to start does not by necessity mean legal to finish, as it overlooks far too much circumstance. Calling fatigue is a good way to lose a job too...there's more than just fatigue. Fatigue is a safety issue. Duty and rest are legal issues. If the flight isn't both legal and safe then it should not, must not go. The employer can no more tell the employee if he or she is fatigued than the employer may tell the employee if he or she is legal. The wise employee makes that determination for himself, and once made, that decision should not be compromised in the least, save for a more conservative decision.
