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New FAA Rest rules are near

  • Thread starter Thread starter Groucho
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Groucho

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From the daily ATA news letter.

PROMISES, PROMISES: FAA fatigue rules finally near
By JOAN LOWY (AP) – 14 hours ago
WASHINGTON — After a regional airliner crashed in western New York a year and a half ago, killing 50 people, the Obama administration promised swift action to prevent similar tragedies. High on the list: new rules governing the number of hours pilots may work, to prevent tired flight crews from making fatal errors.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood wrote in June 2009 that the Federal Aviation Administration was in a hurry and wouldn't wait for Congress "to add mandatory layers to airline safety," nor even for crash investigators to complete their work, "because air passengers deserve action. And, they deserve it now."
It's taken 15 months and a half-dozen missed deadlines, but the FAA is finally about to propose new regulations on how many hours airlines can schedule pilots to be on duty or in the cockpit. A draft was submitted to the White House Office of Management and Budget for review last week, and a proposed rule is likely to be published within days, industry officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to address the issue publicly. A House hearing on the proposal is scheduled for next week.
___
EDITOR'S NOTE — An occasional look at government promises and how well they are kept.
___
Even when the new rules are proposed, it will likely be months — possibly even a year or longer — before they take effect. Pilot unions and relatives of crash victims who have been campaigning for the new rules said they're troubled by the lengthy process when safety is at stake.
"You can't be anything but concerned about the delays. This is supposedly (Federal Aviation Administration chief) Randy Babbitt's No. 1 priority and something there has been a crying need for decades now," said Kevin Kuwik, a spokesman for relatives of the victims of Continental Connection Flight 3407, which crashed near Buffalo in February 2009. An NTSB investigation found that both pilots on the flight were probably suffering from fatigue, although fatigue wasn't a direct cause of the accident.
At a private meeting with White House officials in June, relatives were assured the issue is a priority, he said.
Transportation and FAA officials declined to discuss the reason for the delays. Transportation Department spokeswoman Olivia Alair said only, "We are working as quickly as possible to get the proposal out for comment."
Lawmakers, industry officials and union leaders familiar with the process say the difficulty is in demonstrating that the safety benefits of stricter rules on flight hours — lives saved and injuries avoided — would outweigh the cost of the rules to the struggling airline industry. Depending upon how they are written, new regulations could cost industry billions of dollars over the next decade.
The result, these insiders say, has been a monthslong back-and-forth between the government and industry.
Officials at airline trade associations say they haven't been lobbying to block or delay new regulations. But the cost estimates the airline industry has supplied the government amount to a kind of lobbying, said Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
"I know for sure they are using the rulemaking process to make their case," said Oberstar, who has talked privately with Babbitt about the situation. He said one reason for the delay is that the FAA has been trying to "bulletproof" the proposal against possible challenges.
"The companies don't want any change that will cost them 10 cents," Oberstar said. "That's what it all comes down to."
Tom Hendricks, vice president for the Air Transport Association, an organization of major air carriers, said he hasn't seen either a draft proposal or cost estimates from the FAA. But he said, "We're always very concerned about added costs without a demonstrable safety benefit."
Current rules say pilots can be scheduled for up to 16 hours on duty — which means being at work, ready to fly — and up to eight hours of actual flight time in a 24-hour period, with a minimum of eight hours for rest in between. The rules don't take into account that it can be more tiring for regional airline pilots to fly five or six short legs in six hours than it is for a pilot with a major airline to fly eight hours across the Atlantic to Europe, say, with only one takeoff and landing. Takeoffs and landings are usually the most strenuous part of flying.
The rules also don't take into account pilots whose schedules put them in the cockpit during the period, typically 2 a.m. to 6 a.m., when people are more likely to become fatigued than if they were awake the same number of hours during the daytime. Cargo airlines — especially overnight package services — do much of their flying during those hours.
Major airlines have urged the FAA to balance a reduction in hours for pilots who fly more fatiguing schedules with an increase in hours for pilots who fly less taxing routes, which could offset much of the cost of new rules. Pilot unions oppose that approach.
Babbitt formed a committee of airline and labor officials last summer to make recommendations on new regulations. Instead of one set of recommendations, the committee produced separate proposals from cargo and charter airlines, commercial airlines and pilot unions.
Charter airlines — which fly 95 percent of U.S. troops and 40 percent of military cargo around the world — want to continue exceptions in current regulations that allow longer flight and duty hours for their pilots.
The military "is watching very closely what is going on with the flight and duty-time rulemaking because how that comes out that will affect their ability to move troops and their ability to move cargo," said Oakley Brooks, president of the National Air Carrier Association. "We're working closely with them."
Pilot unions oppose the exceptions, arguing that all airlines should be held to the same safety standards.
"Do we want pilots flying our troops around the world to be more tired than other pilots?" asked Lee Collins, secretary of the Coalition of Airline Pilots Associations.
The effort to overhaul the rules is also a victim of the aviation industry's safety success over the past decade, thanks primarily to better warning systems that help prevent planes from flying into the ground or colliding in midair. In some years, there have been no fatal airline crashes in the U.S.
Finding ways to prevent pilot fatigue has stymied federal regulators and the airline industry for decades. The National Transportation Safety Board has been urging since 1990 that rules be updated to reflect fatigue research.
The FAA proposed new rules in the late 1990s. The proposal lingered for more than a decade without further action, and agency officials cited an impasse between pilots and industry. The proposal was withdrawn last year when the agency began working on the issue again.
"I don't think there's anything hard about looking at what the science tells us and coming up with common-sense rules," said Russ Leighton, head of the Teamsters aviation division. "Getting people to wrap their minds around that change or to stop acting like that change is going to put every airline in the country out of business — that's the hard part."
 
No change will come unless it benefits the airlines, the FAA works for the ATA. The ATA has a VERY powerful lobby and our wonderful government has more special interest groups then a whorehouse in Thailand has VD. If anything I expect the rules to get even worse for pilots. Swift action indeed. Washington is so full of BS.
 
can't hardly wait, 20 bucks says they (the FAA) F it up beyond belief and make our (professional pilots) lives harder.
 
The idiots at DALPA pushing for the 9 hour fly day are almost as bad as the ATA.

Who needs facts?? This is FI....you can just spit out random crap that floats in your brain.....

Where is it posted the "idiots" want this? Show me and I'll back off and apologize....til then STFU
 
just get rid of the reduced part of the rest rules and it would be fine.

I suggested the same thing (a long time ago). Make it 10 hours at the absolute min (and that's 10 hours in the door of the hotel to out the door of the hotel (or other rest facility/home)).

Really to make it simple 12 hours from parking brake set to parking brake release with 8 hours sked flying and 14 hour duty day max.

Learloves new duty regs (domestic/2 crew):

- 12 hour sked duty day, allowed to extend to 14 hour duty day max (that's set foot in the door of the airport to set foot out.)

-8 hours sked flight in the 14 hour day

-12 hours rest for 12 hour duty day. 14 hours rest for duty day that above the 12 hour normal day to the 14 hour max.

-only 1 duty period in each calendar day

-One calendar day between duty periods that end after 9pm with the next starting before 10am. (to give you time to adjust circadian rhythm) So if you end a trip on Monday at 10:15pm you cannot fly a trip that starts at 8am until Wednesday. No restriction on trips that end early (before 9pm) and start after 10am the following day.

-WRT the 1 day off in 7, it is set in stone that day 7 is a CALENDER DAY not the 24hour between flights crapola that some outfits try to pull.
 
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None of these rules will resolve issues of those who commute from the West Coast all night to fly a full schedule the next day... Watch out for what you want-- next thing the Gov't will screw with is making you live in base-- see how that'll fly!!!
 
None of these rules will resolve issues of those who commute from the West Coast all night to fly a full schedule the next day... Watch out for what you want-- next thing the Gov't will screw with is making you live in base-- see how that'll fly!!!

Only if the airline buys your house that is underwater financially. How would that work? What if you owe thousands of dollars on your house and can't sell it? Probably not.
 
They should just put a cymbolta (spelling sorry) in the crew meal and make an 18 hr day with required nap time(coed of course) like in preschool. That would make all this totally awesome!!!!

The ata is not going to give up any time that doesn't fit the 75 yr model of work the crap outta the pilot if u can. Don't truck drivers have more rest requirements than pilots?
 
U.S. Airline Pilots Said to Get More Rest Under FAA Overhaul
By John Hughes - Sep 10, 2010 7:00 AM ET
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Airline pilots would get nine hours of rest between shifts, a 13 percent rise from current schedules, under the first proposed U.S. overhaul of fatigue rules in 15 years, according to a person familiar with the plan.

The changes, prompted by an airline crash last year near Buffalo, New York, would also require pilots to get at least 30 consecutive work-free hours each week, a 25 percent increase from today’s rules, according to the person, who requested anonymity before the proposal is announced.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Federal Aviation Administration chief Randy Babbitt have scheduled a 1 p.m. press conference in Washington today for a “major aviation announcement,” according to a statement yesterday. Sasha Johnson, an FAA spokeswoman, declined to comment on the plans.

The FAA, which regulates safety in the world’s busiest airspace, last year began seeking to link decades-old fatigue rules with scientific research, taking into account issues such as changes across time zones and numbers of takeoffs and landings in a shift. A 1995 effort stalled, with pilots seeking more generous work rules and airlines concerned about costs.

The 1940s-era rules, updated in 1985, let pilots for carriers such as US Airways Group Inc. fly as long as eight hours and limit the overall work day to 16 hours. Under the proposal, pilots would be allowed to fly as long as 10 hours, while the maximum work day would be trimmed to 13 hours, according to the person.

Pilot unions have said the current work rules are too weak because their eight-hour break often includes tasks such as waiting in airport security lines and traveling to hotels, which can leave only a few hours for actual sleep.

‘Badly Need’ Overhaul

“We badly need a new flight and duty-time regulation,” John Prater, president of the 53,000-member Air Line Pilots Association, told a U.S. Senate panel in December.

The FAA began overhauling pilot-rest rules in June 2009, four months after a regional carrier flying for Continental Airlines Inc. crashed near Buffalo, killing 50. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded the pilots’ performances were likely impaired by fatigue, though they couldn’t determine the extent of their tiredness or the role it may have played.

Rebecca Shaw, 24, the co-pilot, had traveled all night from Seattle to Newark, New Jersey, before reporting to work for the flight on Feb. 12, 2009, the NTSB found. Captain Marvin Renslow, 47, commuted from Tampa, Florida, to Newark on Feb. 9 and spent two of three nights before the flight in a crew lounge without beds, the NTSB said.

Renslow “had experienced chronic sleep loss,” the board said in its report, which blamed the crash of the aircraft in Pinnacle Airline Corp.’s Colgan Air unit on his incorrect response to a cockpit stall warning.

The crash prompted a special June 2009 meeting of LaHood, Babbitt, the airlines and unions, on the issue of improving safety at regional airlines. The effort to update the pilot rest rules was announced later that month.

Five months later, the FAA withdrew the attempt begun in 1995, which would have permitted 10 hours of flight time in a 14-hour work day. Industry groups had objected, citing “significant costs,” and unions opposed longer periods in the cockpit, according to the agency.
 
Anybody stop to think Colgan crashed because the two pilots were in over their heads?

I seem to remember CVR comments about "I've never seen that before" etc.. I never read "boy I'm tired because I slept on the couch."

Gup
 
What is that article saying. Normal rest is already 9 hours. It makes no sense unless they are saying no reduced rests?

This sounds like crap already
 
Anybody stop to think Colgan crashed because the two pilots were in over their heads?

I seem to remember CVR comments about "I've never seen that before" etc.. I never read "boy I'm tired because I slept on the couch."

Gup

... And once again the FO has her quote taken completely out of context.
 
What is that article saying. Normal rest is already 9 hours. It makes no sense unless they are saying no reduced rests?

This sounds like crap already

Under the new and revolutionary rest rules that the FAA and NTSB spent $40 million studying, pilots will now work an absolute maximum of 16 hours a day, with a maximum of 8 hours of flying and a minimum of 9, but reducible to 8, hours of rest. Wait a minute..........

Also, the FAA has recieved an additional $25,000,000 to study fatigue and how to avoid it, even though the NTSB has already figured it out and made recommendations years ago. Now, they just have to make new recommendations that don't involve costing the airlines any additional money.
 
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