My parentsī neighbour is a truck (lorry for you Brits!
) driver and when I hear about his īduty regulationsī and how restrictive (and protective of employees) they are, I can hardy believe that we as pilots can work
continuous for 10 hours or more hours without a single break.
My neighbour can hardly believe my schedules either and is shocked to learn that the people in charge of an airplane are worked this hard. He, like the general public, thinks that our duty regulations are even more restrictive and protective.
To my knowlegde BALPA
is working on this issue, but it takes strong support from itīs members to get anything done.
That means that low cost airline pilots have to join some kind of union and that is where the problem lies. Most just canīt be bothered and are too cheap/lazy to join a union, but
love to complain about the inability of the union to change things, which in turn it their rationale for not joining a union.
Itīs a vicious circle and both current members
and BALPA must work hard at trying to force a solution.
I remember another thread here on PPRuNe about īpilots of low cost airlines endangering the publicī but I canīt find it.
By the way, nothing seen/heared from BALPA here on the continent. (crewrooms)
As Iīve said before, BALPA seems to have completely given up of trying to recruit at those bases.
BALPA can learn a lot from the mistakes the pilots in Ryanair made by letting management divide and conquer them as FR has more continental bases and EZY is now also expanding across Europe.