Flight Duty Regualtion interpretation

[flynavy1]

Hi

My employer regularly schedules me for 60 flight hours in 15 days. According to governmental regulations, 60 hours is only allowed in any "half calendar monthly period".

My question to anyone is:
what legally defines a half calendar monthly period?
Any 15 day period (as I believe), or only the two periods of a month from 01st-15th and from 16th-31st (as my employer believes)?

Thanks for any thoughts.

[Phileas Fogg]

It all depends which country you are in. If you are in a JAA member state then your operator needs to have their FTL's approved by the regulating authority however by flight hours one presumes you mean block hours then it is only normally a 28 day restriction or a 12 monthly restriction, not a daily, weekly, two weekly restriction etc. Daily, weekly, two weekly etc. then one is normally restricted by duty hours and not block hours.

[flynavy1]

Thanks for the reply Phil.

According to official swiss FAA regulations, there is actually an additional 60 block hour limit for a half calendar month period, made in 1973 but still legal now, even though they are JAA as well.

My question is more along the lines of what is the correct legal english interpretation of a half calendar monthly period - is it only 01-15 & 16-31 or does it constitute any 15 days grouped together?

[Phileas Fogg]

FN1,
The FTL's that you work to should be in your company Operations Manual which is approved as bing legal by the regulating authority.

Even is there is a blatant mistake in the OM, if it has been approved by the authority then it is legal. I've never known an operator not have the FTL's in the OM and these are the legal regulations for your operator, it should define what is a half month.

If a half month is not defined then it will be open to interpretation and indeed misinterpretation, it could be 15 days, 15.5 days, 360 hours, 372 hours and from no particular starting point. like the 28 day/100 hours rule, this is a rolling 28 days and from no particular starting point.

I cannot believe that an FAA regulation remains legal in a JAA member state, not saying that I disbelieve you but this does sound unrealistic and if you are flying a JAA registered aircraft on a JAA AOC then you must be JAA compliant and the FAA have no jurisdiction whatsoever.

[Oh that's super!]

Phileas,

I suspect Flynavy1 meant OFAC when he wrote "Swiss FAA" (as in Swiss equivalent of FAA), rather than meaning the US FAA.

[Phileas Fogg]

OK,
But the legally binding FTL's are as per the company operations manual.

[Oh that's super!]

Hi Phileas, I'm definitely not arguing that point about the Ops Manual being the legally binding FTL, for sure.

[flynavy1]

You're correct re Swiss FAA - I meant the Swiss equivalent which is actually called BAZL. In their FTLs documents, it states, in german, maximum 60 block hours in one "half calendar monthly period". Our company and our pilots union has interpreted that as meaning it 01-15 and 16-31. I find I disagree with their translation but even though english is my mother tongue, I'd appreciate if some-one would have a legal interpretation of "half-calendar month".

Thanks guys.

[Phileas Fogg]

Flynavy,
Never mind BAZL FTL's what does it state in your company operations manual?

The operations manual is the law you operate by and if there is a half monthly, or half calender monthly restriction, then what constitutes a half month or calender month should be defined.

If it ain't in the company operations manual then it does not constitute part of your company FTL's.

[flynavy1]

Company Ops manual states "half month period" (in english) which for me was clearly any 15 days period. I unwittingly once busted this limit by 0.3 hours and wrote a report to the company and union, as we are required to do. The union came back saying the original BAZL document states "half calendar monthly period" (in german, which they sent me and I could confirm) so with their interpretation I didn't bust any limits as my 60.3 hours occurred from the 8th to 23rd of a month. I didn't hear back from the company at all.

"Half monthly" is not defined in our Ops Manual and "half calendar monthly" is not defined by BAZL (at least as far as I could see).

But in english, just from your understanding of our language, I'm interested to find out what others consider "half calendar month" to mean?

[Phileas Fogg]

Flynavy,
I once had to write the FTL's for an operator to subsequently have them approved by the authority, it was not an easy job trying to cover every option but that is the reason why I understand them so well and all these years later.

Normally, in a company FTL scheme, it will have definitions of things thereafter referred to in the FTL's such as what is a day off, what is a block hour, what is an FDP etc. etc. etc.

When I wrote the FTL's, in English to be approved by a French speaking authority, I deliberately worded certain things so that they could be mis-interpreted whilst confident that a French speaking inspectorate would not detect this wording which they didn't.

If I wanted a half month to be left open to misinterpretation then I would word it cleverly but it seems your company have omitted it totally. If it isn't clearly defined, even open to misinterpretation, then it should be but as I said previously, even if the Operation Manual has mistakes if it has been approved by the authority then it is legal.

You could ask 6 different people and get 6 different answers of what a half month is, if it uses the word 'calender' month then it is clearly half of each and every month thus it could be 14 days, 14.5 days, 15 days or 15.5 days but from no particular date in the month.

But, when I wrote the FTL's I converted such a daily restriction into hours and the authority didn't pick up on it thus if a 15.5 day half month became 372 hours and your first report time was 0800 on the 1st of the month then your half month, 372 hours, would be up at 2000 hours on 16th of the month thus, if you fly daytime, one can achieve 16 days into half a month.

There is no answer to what is half a month until it is incorporated into the operations manual and that's probably why they've left it out.

PF