we are our own worst enemies sometimes (most pilots seem to clock their minutes work worse than a billing lawyer, while engineers will just have finished a shift but will turn around to go back to help out a situation that has arisen). Engineers hours are recorded, its call the pay role system/clocking system, (so any company that says they have no record of engineers hours worked is not really looking) maybe the proper question is why are the CAAs not looking at the engineers clocking, probably because it is not in the regs and they consider it an issue for the Labour department and labour law (FAA see it that way and labour law is a state issue). So which does an avaition company see more, the CAA inspector or the Labour department? But when you get to operators where even labour law enforcement is questionable.............. This is not an excuse however to stop off shoring work or implementation/greater union power (I have seen both distroy jobs) but making safety the primary aim using sensible modern analyitical studies.
ICAO has regulations and they being implemented here in South Africa, and so our regs will read, like ICAO
1) a period of at least 8 consecutive hours in the 24 hour period immediately before exercsing the authorisation and:
2) at least 4 periods of at least 24 consecutive hours each on the 30 days period immediately before exercising the authorisation.
The above regs not too bad I think, a balance between having space for doing some overtime and getting rest and not being abused. Pilot duty time seems to include everything from how long was spent in the toilet
to how far they live from base, but thats another debate and we have all seen it abused
For more info on work fatigue, hours of work and things engineers do, google for these articles and reports
Fatigue Risk Assessment of Aircraft Maintenance Tasks
September 2003
Prepared for Transport Development Centre, Safety & Security Transport Canada
Transport: Rhythm and Blue
2000
Simon Folkard D.Sc, University of Wales
Advisory Circular 120-72
September 2000
FAA
Fatigue in Transport
University of Denver
Reduce Accidents and Incidents Caused by Human Fatigue
NTSB
Work Hours of Aircraft Maintenance Personnel
CAA Paper 2002/06
UK CAA
Evaluation of Aviation Maintenance Working Environments, Fatigue and Human Performance.
January 2001
William B Johnson, Galaxy Scientific Corporation
Steven Hall, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Jean Watson, FAA
Fatigue Offshore: A comparison of Offshore Oil Support Shipping and the Offshore Oil Industry
Centre for Occupational & Health Psychology, Cardiff University
Seafarers International Research Centre, Cardiff University