Could new work and duty rules bump the need for pilots?

[JustaNumber]

You'll see a very large backlash from the commuters, and it may have a very nasty side-effect for the airlines.

Most contracts have a "minimum day off" stipulation. If a commuting day would now count towards duty time, it's not a day off. Remember, Duty or "on call" is not rest - Whitlow interpretation. Therefore, a day off is ONLY one on which you did not fly OR commute, if commuting is now counted as duty.

So what happens to the guy who holds a 14 day off line, 16 days on, 4 4-day trips, uncommutable on BOTH sides for this rule? He just got chopped to 6 days off. Oh,,, wait,,, contract says 12 calendar days off minimum for lineholders.

2 choices: build all trips commutable, or remove me from one of my 4-days and pay protect me to bring me back up to 12 days off minimum. HUGE increase in staffing levels required.

Remember what I said in a thread a few months ago... EVERY SINGLE TIME you change a reg, there's fallout about 3 or 4 levels deep that NO ONE thought of when creating/modifying the reg.

One workaround could be classifying "commute time" as a separate entity that is neither duty time nor rest time. (Similar to "on call" time: neither "duty" nor "rest"). The reg could be a simple update to the Whitlow Letter, saying that at any given moment, you must be able to look back 24 hours and find 9 hours of rest (or hopefully more) that are free from all "duty," "on call," AND "commute" time. But "commute time" could still occur on an off day. The definition of an "off day" would not change: a day free of all duty or obligation to the company (i.e. "on call" time). Hard to argue with that, since pilots are currently okay with commuting on an off day.

 

[JustaNumber]

Simple answer. Same airline revenue ='s more pilots at less pay. Increased ticket prices to pay for more pilots ='s fewer riders, fewer trips, and fewer pilots at the same pay.

I'm not saying you're incorrect, I'm just trying to follow the circular logic of your second theorem. Let's say it's true; management is not stupid, so instead of hiring and then later firing more pilots, they just sit tight. As the new rest rules are implemented, they simply cancel the flights they can't cover. I assume it would be a significant number of flights.

Now in the public's perception, there are far fewer seats available, and the value of that commodity would naturally rise. For simplicity's sake, let's say the number of flights is cut in half, and the price of a seat doubles. Therefore the airline sees the same amount of revenue. Pilot gross pay remains the same for less work. The airline also sees another upside, in that they can eliminate additional unnecessary overhead. One could possibly say, "Mission Accomplished."

The downsides would be, that overhead would include mechanics' and gate agents' jobs, and it wouldn't be such a good deal for the consumer. (Of course we would be less likely to kill them, which is a plus).

As someone already said, there would certainly be far-reaching consequences that would be difficult to predict. That's not to say that revising the rest and duty rules in accordance with the actual scientific limitations of the human body is not the morally correct thing to do.