Results of ARC rewrite for Flight and Duty (135)

[hammer2]

Just a question. With 12 on 12 off, what happens when a trip comes in on your 9th hour but your other shift is still off???

Then you hire more people!
Question, what if that trip consisted of a ten hour day, you are in your 9th hr should you take it? Most companies say hell yeah! Whats the problem? It will go down on paper as a 10 hr day. I know I'm spinning my wheels, but we as pilots do except to much. Try telling a company you are fatigued on a regular basis and see what happens!!!!

 

[pilotyip]

Hammer, you guys who feel this way can fix it, by refusing to work for companies that don't do 12 on 12 off. Incidentally one of our pilot went to work for a company that has 12 on 12 off, it is an EMS helo outfit. His 12 hours is spent in uniform in the hanger on a 15 minute go. If a trip comes up at 11:45 and the next crew is not there, they are required to fly. Is that how you want 12 on 12 off to work?

 

[hammer2]

Yea Hammer, tell me how do I schedule a 12 on 12 off in the on-demand business?

Don't tell me it won't work. Being at a fractional( which is nothing more than a charter company.) I never take on more than a 14 hr day which could be reduced to 12. And we get pop ups as well. Oh! I forgot, I'm at a company thats willing to spend money.... They hired enough pilots to make it work..... You have so many aicraft, so hire enough pilots to crew the aicraft 24 hrs. Your buddy is getting screwed.

 

[Boilermaker]

Hammer, I completely understand where you are coming from. The problem is that we live in different worlds (assuming you are a frax pilot). Your company is able to have the staff it needs where we do not. If you guys run into a duty day problem you bring in another fresh crew to cover it. If that doesn't work you call......us. What happens to the whole system when we can't cover that?? Believe me, I won't fly fatigued and my boss wouldn't press me to. As was stated earlier, if I have been home all day watching the tube and I get a call at 4pm for an 8 hour trip I'll take it. If I get to 10 pm and I can't go anymore, I make that call and get a hotel room. My company supports that call 100%. The problem I would run into would be a frax wanting to use me for my 14 hours at whatever time they called (some frax are not that bad but some try to push it).

I agree we will never all be in agreement, but there are 2 different worlds. Frax charge their customers for pilots to be on standby and cover these situations (and recent data shows people are figuring out that the dollars and cents don't make sense when they look at frax vs. chartering). ODC can only charge owners so much and charge customers so much (i.e. you guys wouldn't use us if our hourly charge went to $4000 per hour for a Hawker) before we go out of business. This is not because our owners are cheap! They understand what the market allows and pay accordingly, but they know they don't need 5 pilots to cover one airplane. Just a part of the business.

Honestly it will probably work out to where we have to lose trips for us to meet the new rest requirements and that is not all bad. I will always lean to the position of safety. Again, as someone said, common sense will always be the turning point regardless of rules. Those that fly tired now will fly tired no matter what FAR135 says and those of us that know when to call it a day will do it regardless of if we started at 4am or 4pm.

My soapbox just broke so I'm done!

Boiler

 

[hammer2]

You all are right. Things are good the way they are.

 

[pilotyip]

Nice touch boiler, a touch of reality from a company trying to stay in business versus a very profitable company with deep pockets that can hire extra pilots to do the same work. Not to mention 99% of hammer’s flying is done between 0600L and 2400L, with a four-hour call out. That gives schedulers a lot more consistency to deal with than a uniform coverage 24/7 with a 30-minute call out. Different worlds, different solutions. BTW isn’t NJ Part 91 subpart K?

 

[Boilermaker]

You all are right. Things are good the way they are.

No one ever said that, Hammer. There is always room for improvement and increases in safety. There will be a middle ground where pilots will get their rest period and operators can still service a part of the aviation system that makes it valuable to people. Who knows what that will look like. On our side, we will lose some last minute charter revenue, but that is a (small) part of the business. Don't be fooled, though, it will affect everyone. Frax will start having to tell some of their customers that they have to wait 8-10 hours for a crew to come out of rest because there is not as much availability from the ODC industry. (Which always happens at the worst time....New Years, President's Day, Super Bowl, etc.) Granted, you can tell them to deal with it because they have bought in and they don't have much to say about it.

It would be nice if everything worked out in a nice, concise way but it never will. We will survive, however, but I suspect there will be some that won't.

 

[hammer2]

Nice touch boiler, a touch of reality from a company trying to stay in business versus a very profitable company with deep pockets that can hire extra pilots to do the same work. Not to mention 99% of hammer’s flying is done between 0600L and 2400L, with a four-hour call out. That gives schedulers a lot more consistency to deal with than a uniform coverage 24/7 with a 30-minute call out. Different worlds, different solutions. BTW isn’t NJ Part 91 subpart K?

So Yip are you saying that a company struggling should be able to massage the rules to stay in business? You can bend a rule 27 different ways and make the paper work look legal. I had to go through the 2 clock system, I'll bet you have too. Then I wised up and quit. You're right most of my flying is between 0600l-1200l, but in my short life I have learned time works the same whether it is o600l-1200l or 1200l-0600! Yip you're more interested in saving USA JET than easing the rules on pilots and making this a decent career outside of Southwest

 

[hammer2]

One more question. Do you believe 10hrs is enough rest?

 

[hammer2]

Yip I just read your post in the union forum. I see what you think we are worth.