Originally Posted by
CaptainMongo
When the FAR 117 Duty time limits bill was written cargo operations were included. When the bill was signed into law, cargo operations were excluded.
Apparently our DC politicians believe cargo pilots are not susceptible to the same circadian rhythm issues as commercial air carrier pilots. If unreasonable scheduling (and unreasonable in my mind is anything contrary to FAR 117) is exposed in this lawsuit, it will have been a worthy endeavor. A lawsuit exposing that will create a far more powerful incentive to include cargo pilots under 117, than an NTSB report.
The DC politicians got paid a lot of money to exclude cargo operations and there was no fear of voter blowback as with passenger operations.
In the eyes of the government a person is worth ~11 million dollars. At the time of the proposed rule there had been one Part 121 cargo fatal accident in the last ten years if I recall correctly. It was argued by UPS management and others that the cost of applying Part 117 to cargo would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. It was better for business to accept a 22 million dollar write-off once a decade. Totally ignoring the cost of the aircraft and cargo and the fact that in about a third of airline accidents someone on the ground is killed too.