Administrative or Rolling Week?

[HugMonster]

An informal survey here:-

Whose companies have a rolling week for purposes of their FTL scheme (i.e., no more than 55 hours in any consecutive 7-day period) and who has an "administrative" week (i.e. defined start/end e.g. 7 days commencing at 0001 on a Monday)?

Secondary question is:-

Of anyone who works to an "administrative" week, how many people find that they consistently work significantly more than 55 hours in any 7-day period, whilst keeping to the limit in their "administrative" week?

[Tinstaafl]

Most places I've worked had a combination. The standard FTLs specified in the rules in Oz are usually used by most GA operators.

In part, the FTL rules there specify not more than 'x' flight time hrs in 7/30/365 days **and**
not more than 'y' duty hours (that involve flight time) per admin. fortnight.

[Luftwaffle]

Don't your regs say "in any 7 day period"?
Surely that means just that. I'm limited to 60 hours flying a week, so if I don't fly Monday to Thursday, then fly 30 hours on Friday to Saturday, I'm limited to 30 hours the following Monday to Thursday. If your regs allow you to zero your time with no time off, just because Monday happened, that sounds like an accidental loophole.

[PaulDeGearup]

Hugs, I have it on extremely good authority that the CAA SRG, following several incidents of dubious rostering, are actively pursuing the elimination of the administrative week. It will be replaced with a rolling 7 day week.

In addition, the practice of using a 2 hour time zone as a get out for multiple early duties will be phased out as the start times will all be based on Zulu. This will stop certain operators - not your lot in the NE incidentally - scheduling you for a couple of UK early duties followed by 2 or 3 in Europe and claiming the European earlies don,t count as the report is based on local time which is of course +1 or +2 on UTC.

[Tinstaafl]

Hi Luftwaffle,

That section specifically enables the admin. week (actually, an admin. fortnight).

It says (quoting from memory)

"A pilot shall not fly, and an operator shall not roster a pilot to fly, where at the completion of the flight the pilot will have accrued more than 90 hrs duty in any fortnight period standing alone. The operator may specify the day on which the fortnight commences."


There is a clear distinction between how this paragraph is written compared to other paragraphs above it (below it?) that use phrases similar to:

"...may not accrue more than xxx hrs flight time in the previous 7 days..."

Ditto for the paragraphs concerning 30 & 365 day FTL.

[PPRuNe Towers]

Admin week is widely used and abused in the UK industry. The companies will desperately try to hang on to it.

------------------
Regards from the Towers
[email protected]

[beaver eager]

Having sat on the BALPA Flight Time Limitations Committee for a while last year, I can confirm that the reason the CAA allowed the weekly limits to be totted up the way they may be at present is that in the wake of the Bader Committee, when FTLs were first introduced (I think), the companies all pleaded that in the pre-computer era it would simply be too complicated to administer a 7 day rolling week for cumulative duty hours. (I don't know why they felt able to cope with a rolling 28 day month or 900 hours/year though!).

Anyway the CAA allowed the 'administrative' week that HugMonster now refers to.

My sources tell me though, that the CAA have finally woken up to the fact that all such records are now held on spreadsheets and databases with the automatic inclusion of any limitations into rostering programs and the automatic generation of warnings to rostering clerks when limits are being approached.

There really is no excuse now for not using a 'rolling' week and change IS apparently on the way!

BTW, CityFlyer have an administrative week from midnight on Thursday, and we regularly work 'seven days on' which straddle the changeover and exceed 55 hours in seven days by a considerable margin - at the moment it's all legal.

When the revolution comes......

[PPRuNe Towers]

I did have some concrete news when I made my brief post but decided to wait until I had seen it in black and white.

Firstly PaulDeGearup and beaver eager are correct in mentioning the new CAA interest in the topic.

The last few months have shown a consistent new tenor amongst the CAA contacts we meet. Flight Ops as well as SRG are becoming much more proactive on many fronts. It's naive to believe crew will ever be anything other than cynical about them and their actions there has been a very refreshing change of mood.

Privately they've fired some very uncomfortable shots across the bows of companies. Additionally they've warned operators that they are carefully monitoring the proportion of simulator training and testing done during back of the clock time slots.

While the CAA have been taking an active interest in the administative week the first move has actually been a negotiated one between pilots and management at KLM/Buzz.

Manuals have now been revised to switch to a rolling week and the next rostering period will mark the transition to the new system. Cabin crew await news as to whether their negotions on terms and conditions will include the same provisions.

As other correspondents observe computer based rostering systems retain all the historical data to demonstrate exactly what has been going on and the coding to maintain and record administrative week limits is actually more complex to achieve than rolling ones.

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Regards from the Towers
[email protected]



[This message has been edited by PPRuNe Towers (edited 12 April 2001).]