WSJ article on looming flight/duty time changes

[Paul R. Smith]

This, too, is likely to be based primarily on duty day rather than as it is now, primairly on block to block times.Rounded, this is about
8 hours of duty (not flight time) per day in 7 days,
7 hours of duty per day in 14 days
7 hours of duty per day in 28 days.

This is what may drive greater numbers on the pilot rolls. Right now, you put a reserve out on the neverending gobstopper trip, you will likely run up against this stop, vice a 30 in 7 stop. Six days of flying, allowing for only 55 hours of duty time, gives you about 9 hours per day of duty. Add show times, sit times, on call times (which count in this reg as duty) and probably will hit 55 hours of duty before you hit 30 hours of flying. That reserve has to go home and rest. And this rest isn't 24 hours from from duty anywhere in the world, anywhere on your circadium clock. It is:There may be some efficiencies gained by being able to fly 9 hours, but many of the other restrictions I think will more than offset this.

And the above is basically for daytime trips. Once you get into night stuff it gets even more restrictive.

I dunno, I appreciate your logical and pragmatic assumptions but with airline stocks up today, I think the CEOs at the airlines are salivating about the future of pilot staffing as it is impacted by the FAA's NPRM.
They know something.

 

[Empennage]

It's a good thing age 65 passed. Whew, that pilot shortage was right around the corner.

 

[densoo]

I dunno, I appreciate your logical and pragmatic assumptions but with airline stocks up today, I think the CEOs at the airlines are salivating about the future of pilot staffing as it is impacted by the FAA's NPRM.
They know something.

Gotta agree on that. They're only happy if we're not.

 

[filejw]

Great a AMS turn from the east coast ...

 

[igneousy2]

"The proposal envisions a sliding scale of between seven and 11 scheduled"

Why do we get 1 (8-7=1) hour and they get 3 (11-8=3)hours? When I flew inter-island in Hawaii we did 8-10 legs a day and STILL didn't get close to 7 hours. I think each landing you make should be counted as some amount of hours say 1.0 and then count the flight time and then let them go to 11.

 

[igneousy2]

As far as these regs go I feel a BOHICA moment coming and I would bet that in 2 years after these rules have been put in place we will look back and it would have had a minimal amount of improvement for safety with a bunch of guys at the ATA smiling all the way to the bank.

 

[AA767AV8TOR]

So let me see if I got this straight. We have an accident (and a bunch of other incidents) due to fatigue yet we end up increasing the duty day to 11 scheduled per day.

I don’t know if this is intuitively obvious to many out there, but for most of us, this will reduce manning requirements (no third pilot/transcom turns).

Thanks ALPA!! Even when we win, we lose!! ATA has to be laughing.

AA767AV8TOR :bawling:

 

[Draginass]

It's starting to look obvious to me that the FAA is going right into the pocket of the ATA again. Got to hand it to the ATA, it looks like they're taking a tragedy, partly of their making, and are going to make a profit off of it.

Sliding scale, my butt. You watch. Less pilots. More workdays for commuters, and lots of furloughs at the majors.

And much less safety.

 

[atpcliff]

Hi!

If we do 11 hours of flying in a 12 or 13 hour duty day, that is less than the current 16 hour day, especially when they lower the flight/duty for multiple legs and night/early morning starts.

Two legs, with 11 hours of flying, in a 13 hour day, is a LOT less tiring than being woken up at 0100, after one hour of sleep, and being on reserve for the past 96 hours, and being told you have a 16 hour duty day coming up, which gets extended by 5 hours of "Duty Break" so your days ends at 2100 the NEXT night, after being on duty for 21 hours (counting the duty break), but only 7 hours of flight time!!!

cliff
NBO

 

[Splert]

Transcon turns...

11 hours of flight time in 14 hours of duty seems like it will work on paper but out on the line if airlines attempt to run the airline this way it will cause havok. For instance I did a IAD 2 day and it was 10:09 of block with 12:09 of duty without the a turn time of included.

Throw in a marketing schedule, aircraft flow, holding for a gate, MX, weather and ATC delays and duty time starting at the hotel and ending at the hotel and how can transcon turns work 365 days a year for the next 30 years.

They can't it seems. Maybe a few days a years but the other days it will cause to many distrubtions to make it work.

Now maybe LAX - JFK - FLL is another story. But what about FLL - JFK - LAX proabably not.

Time will tell...

 

[General Lee]

This will be GREAT news for SWA pilots. They currently do 5 or 6 legs a day intra-Texas, and now they can do 8 or 9. Heck, just throw an EXTRA LBB turn and HOU turn from DAL. Or, instead of just doing FLL-TPA-MSY-HOU-ELP, they can then add PHX, LAS, and finally SMF to the day. Wow, that sounds FANTASTIC! Go team!


Bye Bye--General Lee

 

[IBNAV8R]

No wonder ATA, RAA "fully support these efforts".

 

[densoo]

This will be GREAT news for SWA pilots. They currently do 5 or 6 legs a day intra-Texas, and now they can do 8 or 9. Heck, just throw an EXTRA LBB turn and HOU turn from DAL. Or, instead of just doing FLL-TPA-MSY-HOU-ELP, they can then add PHX, LAS, and finally SMF to the day. Wow, that sounds FANTASTIC! Go team! Bye Bye--General Lee

Look at the chart. The more legs, the lower the duty period.

http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/33/CAP371.PDF

For a duty day that starts between 8a and 1p, limited to 1 leg in 14 hrs, 2 legs in 13 1/4 hrs, 5 legs in 11 hrs, etc. It might be hard to get 8 legs into a 9 1/2 duty day with show time and turn time included. I guess they could try.

Once you move out of the 8a to 1p start time, the duty day goes down even further, making it even more difficult to squeeze in that many legs.

 

[atpcliff]

Hi!

I was also going to tell the General, that he must have been doing something other than web-boarding...it has been all over the place that more TOs and Ls, along with late night/early morning start times will reduce both the hours of flying allowed, as well as the duty day.

My only criticism is that they are taking too long implementing this stuff, which is one of the reasons I am sending a report to various elected officials: If Congress wants these changes done quicker, they will be.

cliff
NBO

 

[jmreii]

It's starting to look obvious to me that the FAA is going right into the pocket of the ATA again. Got to hand it to the ATA, it looks like they're taking a tragedy, partly of their making, and are going to make a profit off of it.

Sliding scale, my butt. You watch. Less pilots. More workdays for commuters, and lots of furloughs at the majors.

And much less safety.

When was the last time you seen a business allowing their peasants, pardon me, I meant their employees, win in anything including keeping their jobs. Employees will win as long as they do not interfere with the powers that be ability to generate astronomical amounts of wealth.