Twiggsy
you should pay attention what is said in a factual matter.
Take Two:
All western developed countries (USA/Europe/etc.) and most developing countries in Asia have FDL for cabin crew (which includes daily/weekly/monthly/yearly limits).
This is not because politicians or regulators like or dislike cabin crew. It came about to provide a reasonable framework for rostering taking fatigue, health and jetlag issues into consideration. It also stops scrupulous operators from exploiting staff too much.
This is based on research done wordwide by a number of industry experts but it is largely ignored in Australia due to a lack of cohesive joint push by the Domestic/international FAAA, to get engaged in policy writing/ educate the public, politicians and regulator. The resident FAAA rep here claims hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spend in the past, which is absolutely nonsense. There has been NO representation in Canberra/ CASA for years.
An example of a survey done
http://medind.nic.in/iab/t04/i1/iabt04i1p10.pdf
When CASA started the regulatory review some 10+ years ago it was to align the regulations with international standards including for the first time ever in Australia legislate the cabin crew environment.
Let’s not forget one of the outstanding successes in lobbying and educating CASA and the politicians is the 1:36 crew to pax ratio. In recent years the current FAAA has not been doing any lobbying in Canberra so a number of exemptions (e.g. 1:50) came in without any serious challenges by the unions. “Now the horse has bolted” it will be very difficult to change a precedent. There are an also a number of clarification on legislative wording which the airlines have exploited to their advantage without the unions having any idea about them.
Twiggsy,
if you think that the vast majority of world having FDL for cabin crew is out of step with the real world I would like to propose a new category in the Aviation Hall of Fame
The 2009 Aviation I...t of the Year Award goes to .............
