Hi all
This is the third thread I've started on pprune, the others being on safety standards in the loco sector (which was absorbed by Danny into "Ryanair in the news...") and the other being on "IAA, CAA and safety standards".
As I made clear at the start of those posts, my name is Ian Shoesmith and I am a BBC News journalist who is investigating safety standards within the airline industry in general, and within the low-cost operators in particular.
Part of my research to date has thrown up the importance of flight time limitations (FTLs), and whether the existing 900hour annual limit (including no more than 100 in a 28day period) is working sufficiently well in order to prevent pilots flying when unfit due to fatigue.
I know Easyjet changed their rosters a while ago, in response to a trial in which they found evidence of fewer errors being made when they moved away from a 6/3 roster to a 5 early shifts/2/5 late shifts/4 (David Learmount wrote extensively about this in Flight International, 6/6/06). Do his conclusions ring true in your experience?
Should Ryanair adopt a similar roster? Would it cut down on mistakes being made?
I would imagine it's very hard for airlines to make pilots go "over-hours" in terms of the 900/100 rule, but please correct me if I'm wrong. And what about the 12-hour shift rule? Do (loco) airlines regard this, as some contributors have posted, as a target rather than a limit? How frequently are pilots asked to fly into what I believe is called a "discretionary" period beyond the 12 hours but certainly no more than 14?
Naturally I understand we're talking about some pretty sensitive issues here, and that you may not want to publish a post on the forum. If this is the case, you can either pm me, or email
[email protected] or call me on +44 (0)7769 977665. As ever, any conversations, emails etc will be treated in the strictest of confidence, and I'm happy (at least at this stage) to speak to people anonymously.
Best wishes, and apologies for the somewhat lengthy posting
Ian