FAA to issue new rest rules!

[Bubi352]

The FAA is set to announce at 10 am ET new rest rules. O boy...


FAA to issue rules aimed at tired airline pilots - USATODAY.com (http://travel.usatoday.com/flights/story/2011-12-21/FAA-to-issue-rules-aimed-at-tired-airline-pilots/52136068/1)

[Basil]

The maximum amount of time pilots can be scheduled to fly is limited to eight or nine hours, and pilots would get a minimum of 10 hours to rest between duty periods
Which means?

[weasil]

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Acting Administrator Michael Huerta today announced a sweeping final rule that overhauls commercial passenger airline pilot scheduling to ensure pilots have a longer opportunity for rest before they enter the cockpit.

“This is a major safety achievement,” said Secretary LaHood. “We made a promise to the traveling public that we would do everything possible to make sure pilots are rested when they get in the cockpit. This new rule raises the safety bar to prevent fatigue.”

“Every pilot has a personal responsibility to arrive at work fit for duty. This new rule gives pilots enough time to get the rest they really need to safely get passengers to their destinations,” said FAA Acting Administrator Huerta.

The Department of Transportation identified the issue of pilot fatigue as a top priority during a 2009 airline Safety Call to Action following the crash of Colgan Air flight 3407. The FAA launched an aggressive effort to take advantage of the latest research on fatigue to create a new pilot flight, duty and rest proposal, which the agency issued on September 10, 2010.

Key components of this final rule for commercial passenger flights include:

Varying flight and duty requirements based on what time the pilot’s day begins. The new rule incorporates the latest fatigue science to set different requirements for pilot flight time, duty period and rest based on the time of day pilots begin their first flight, the number of scheduled flight segments and the number of time zones they cross. The previous rules included different rest requirements for domestic, international and unscheduled flights. Those differences were not necessarily consistent across different types of passenger flights, and did not take into account factors such as start time and time zone crossings.

Flight duty period. The allowable length of a flight duty period depends on when the pilot’s day begins and the number of flight segments he or she is expected to fly, and ranges from 9-14 hours for single crew operations. The flight duty period begins when a flightcrew member is required to report for duty, with the intention of conducting a flight and ends when the aircraft is parked after the last flight. It includes the period of time before a flight or between flights that a pilot is working without an intervening rest period. Flight duty includes deadhead transportation, training in an aircraft or flight simulator, and airport standby or reserve duty if these tasks occur before a flight or between flights without an intervening required rest period.

Flight time limits of eight or nine hours. The FAA limits flight time – when the plane is moving under its own power before, during or after flight – to eight or nine hours depending on the start time of the pilot’s entire flight duty period.

10-hour minimum rest period.The rule sets a 10-hour minimum rest period prior to the flight duty period, a two-hour increase over the old rules. The new rule also mandates that a pilot must have an opportunity for eight hours of uninterrupted sleep within the 10-hour rest period.

New cumulative flight duty and flight time limits.The new rule addresses potential cumulative fatigue by placing weekly and 28-day limits on the amount of time a pilot may be assigned any type of flight duty. The rule also places 28-day and annual limits on actual flight time. It also requires that pilots have at least 30 consecutive hours free from duty on a weekly basis, a 25 percent increase over the old rules.

Fitness for duty. The FAA expects pilots and airlines to take joint responsibility when considering if a pilot is fit for duty, including fatigue resulting from pre-duty activities such as commuting. At the beginning of each flight segment, a pilot is required to affirmatively state his or her fitness for duty. If a pilot reports he or she is fatigued and unfit for duty, the airline must remove that pilot from duty immediately.

Fatigue Risk Management System. An airline may develop an alternative way of mitigating fatigue based on science and using data that must be validated by the FAA and continuously monitored.

In 2010, Congress mandated a Fatigue Risk Management Plan (FRMP) for all airlines and they have developed these plans based on FAA guidance materials. An FRMP provides education for pilots and airlines to help address the effects of fatigue which can be caused by overwork, commuting, or other activities. Airlines will be required to train pilots about the potential effects of commuting.

Required training updates every two years will include fatigue mitigation measures, sleep fundamentals and the impact to a pilot’s performance. The training will also address how fatigue is influenced by lifestyle – including nutrition, exercise, and family life – as well as by sleep disorders and the impact of commuting.

The estimated cost of this rule to the aviation industry is $297 million but the benefits are estimated between $247- $470 million. Covering cargo operators under the new rule would be too costly compared to the benefits generated in this portion of the industry. Some cargo airlines already have improved rest facilities for pilots to use while cargo is loaded and unloaded during night time operations. The FAA encourages cargo operators to opt into the new rule voluntarily, which would require them to comply with all of its provisions.

The final rule has been sent to the Federal Register for display and publication. It is currently available at:http://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/rulemaking/recently_published/media/2120-AJ58-FinalRule.pdf, and will take effect in two years to allow commercial passenger airline operators time to transition.

A fact sheet with additional information is at Fact Sheets (http://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets/).

[Airbubba]

Which means?

Here's the official executive summary, most of the initial media coverage will be based on this press release:

Fact Sheet – Pilot Fatigue Rule Comparison (http://www.faa.gov/news/fact_sheets/news_story.cfm?newsId=13273)

The source document is here:

http://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/rulemaking/recently_published/media/2120-AJ58-FinalRule.pdf

Freight dogs were exempted under the customary 'no significant loss of life' waiver but the cargo airlines will be encouraged to participate voluntarily:

Another dispute in development of the rules was whether to apply the same rules to cargo pilots as pilots of commercial airliners. The FAA decided not to apply the rules to cargo pilots because of the costs to that industry, Huerta said.

LaHood said he would invite cargo executives to his office in 2012 and urge them to voluntarily adopt the changes.

"It was tough to implement it on cargo because of the cost-benefit to this," LaHood said.

Airline pilots to fly shorter shifts, get rest - USATODAY.com (http://travel.usatoday.com/flights/story/2011-12-21/FAA-rules-Airline-pilots-must-fly-shorter-shifts-rest-more/52139264/1)

[Mr Angry from Purley]

Some bits of CAP371 and some bits of Sub Part Q FTL

[Huck]

Can't apply the new rules to cargo, because it would cost the cargo airlines too much money.

But they're the only ones MAKING money.....

[Basil]

Airbubba, Thank you.
I skimmed the FAA source doc. Must say I'd never looked at FAA FTLs before and was surprised that the standard rest seems to be 10hrs and not 12hrs.
By the time you unwind and have something to eat you're going to be a bit pushed to have 8hrs sleep and make pickup.

My last operation was 3 FD crew and a start from 0800-1259 gave us 14hrs FDP. Rest was the greater of 12hrs or the preceding FDP. Under certain circumstances that could be reduced.

I was interested to see the augmented crew long range ops FTL rules. I've forgotten what ours were.

Lets hope the boys and girls at least get themselves a crashpad near base. I knew one guy who slept in a VW camper in the staff car park.

[PAXboy]

Question from a pax: With all this great boasting from the FAA and it's politicians about "This new rule raises the safety bar to prevent fatigue."

Am I too cyncial to think that this just takes us back to how it was before? If so, when did rest times get squeezed? Or perhaps this really IS new?

[MarkerInbound]

PAXboy,

The current rules vary if you are flying domestically or international and on a schedule or charter. The basic domestic rule is you can fly 8 hours in a 16 hour duty period, 30 hours a week and must have a 24 hour block off every 7 days. Once you you go international there is no limit to the duty time except the 24/7 as long as the flight time is less than 8 in 24. With a F/E the international flight time goes up to 12 hours and again, no duty time limit.

[OldCessna]

Read the fine print...

It starts in 2 years

In 2 years it will be well watered down, changed, manipulated etc etc

[PAXboy]

MarkerInbound Thanks for that. Are the current regs weaker (allow more work per month, say) than 20 years ago?

OldCessna Glad I'm not the only cynical one. :hmm:

[Huck]

Glad I'm not the only cynical one.

No you're not. Wait until November 2012....

[captjns]

I'm betting either deferred a couple of more years, or repealed all together:{.

[Sqwak7700]

Read the fine print...

It starts in 2 years

My initial thought as well. But I thought that period has passed. Once the final ruling is made they can't change, especially if they haven't yet operated under them and tried them out. Then again, the cynic in me sees how broken government is everywhere, not just the US.

I did noticed skimming through the doc that cargo carriers are excluded. But you see countless comments and recommendations, especially from UPS. I understand that they did not know that they would be excluded in the original document. But once the FAA established that cargo would be excluded they should have thrown out all recommendations and variation proposed by these cargo carriers.

If they are deemed not substantial enough to require inclusion, surely they are not substantial enough to oppose changes to the same regulations.

Anyway, you could also see some carriers rushing to these new rules. Some carriers will be able to do near-transcon turns, where as now they can't. Regionals will be hit the hardest due to the number of daily sectors combined with short layovers.

Having operated under FAA and CAP 371 (which are similar to these new FAA regs), I must say the FAA system was very outdated. Don't get me wrong, CAP is not perfect and you work hard, but some of the ridiculous duty periods you could achieve with the old FAA system are removed.

[two green one prayer]

Someone should explain to the FAA that "no significant loss of life" with cargo operations should be extended to people on the ground. It may be news to the FAA that most airports are near large cities and that a crashed cargo plane does not only kill the flight crew. We can not always rely on the luck and skill of the pilots to land in the Hudson River or it's equivalent. Sooner or later a fatigued crew is going to do something dumb like using 250 tons instead of 350 tons as the aircraft's all up weight and with another hole in the cheese in the right place, crash in the middle of a city. Even with a wide body full of passengers the onboard death toll will be as nothing compared to the ground casualties. I have personal experience of extreme fatigue while soldiering and know what this does to a fit 20 year old. Never mind an elderly gent. with 20,000 hours of flight time.
There is, for practical purposes, an absolute ban on alcohol when flying because this is measurable. The equally dangerous and far more insidious effects of accumulated fatigue is not measurable. The only way to offset this is to have far more generous rest periods and to rely on the sense of responsibility of the individual pilot to use these properly. This only seems expensive until a heavy aircraft full of fuel lands on a population centre. To repeat the old cliche, " Safety is expensive, now cost the accident".

[WHBM]

“Every pilot has a personal responsibility to arrive at work fit for duty...."
Indeed. But surely the operator also has an equal responsibility. In the case of the Colgan accident at Buffalo, with a flight crew based at Newark, one of them commuted from Florida and one from Seattle. Now you do have to ask what the HR department and upper management of a carrier that engages personnel living so far from their regular place of work were thinking of.

[IcePack]

Now you do have to ask what the HR department and upper management of a carrier that engages personnel living so far from their regular place of work were thinking of.

Think you'll find that lots of airlines are guilty in that respect.

I've heard of people living in Vancouver & positioning to UK then "immediately" operating a flight to Boston, let alone the numbers who live in france & operate out of the UK. I guess it is a world wide problem, which does not help the FTL cause.:ugh:

[jcjeant]

New US Pilot Fatigue Rules Published - Despite Intense Industry Opposition | European Cockpit Association (ECA) (http://www.eurocockpit.be/stories/20111222/new-us-pilot-fatigue-rules-published-despite-intense-industry-opposition)

[kenparry]

Perhaps this can be used as a lever on EASA's current proposals for FTL, which are a giant leap backwards from CAP371.

[GlueBall]

These two air heads must actually be convinced that pilots flying cargo are less fatigued than pilots flying pax.

The air carrier industry can't get much dumber than this.

...One can only wonder if freighters will ever be assigned a cabin crew to ding-dong the cockpit every hour as they do on pax flights. :confused:

[BusyB]

JH,

El Al in AMS:confused:

[jcjeant]

Hi,

El Al in AMSBad reference ..so .. discarded
Nothing to do with crew rest ..

[Airbubba]

These two air heads must actually be convinced that pilots flying cargo are less fatigued than pilots flying pax.

Well, I would observe that there has always been a lower safety standard for cargo operators in the U.S. Whether this should be the case has been debated here and elsewhere for many years.

Here is a post from over five years ago, since then FedEx has had yet another widebody hull loss, the fatal MD-11 crash at NRT in 2009:

Airbubba 29th Jul 2006, 16:57

>>by now FED EX must have one of the worst hull loss records in the industry!

Sadly, FedEx seems to have a widebody hull loss every two or three years. If they were a pax carrier there would be enormous adverse publicity and probably many casualties as well.

I've got friends over at FedEx who tell me the FAA has been all over their training for years now. Instead of annual AQP sim checks like most U.S. carriers, they are under a closely monitored old style six month program.

The pilot flying in the December 2003 MD-10 hard landing and fire at MEM had a history of busted checkrides before she was hired. In April, 1994 the feds pulled her ATP after an FAA inspector observed her performance. She took more training and got the ATP back and was hired by FedEx in 1996. At FedEx she had more checkride failures, a couple of DUI's and an altitude bust that set up the fateful Mad Dog line check back into MEM. Is it possible that "diversity" was promoted over performance in this case? A possibly similar precedent at FedEx was the overlooked poor employment history of Auburn Calloway who brutally attempted to hijack a FedEx DC-10 in MEM in 1994.

Traditionally, FedEx has had very high employment standards for the freight world, i.e. almost all pilots have college degrees (well, there are some Naval Academy graduates <g>) and many are like the founder [I stand corrected, Fred was an officer but not an Aviator in the Marine Corps-Airbubba], Fred Smith, ex-military aviators. The company is consistently profitable and maintenance is excellent by most accounts.

Still, the mishaps and hull losses continue at what everyone agrees is an unacceptable rate...

FedEx Off Runway MEM [Archive] - PPRuNe Forums (http://www.pprune.org/archive/index.php/t-236665.html)

Shore Guy recounts earlier FedEx mishaps in the thread above:

Shore Guy 29th Jul 2006, 23:58

To my recollection, this will be the sixth hull loss for Fedex in recent history.
Going from memory here....not necessarily in chronological order.
MD-10 MEM July, 2006 (looks like a hull loss)
MD-10 MEM 2003
B727 Tallahassee, Fl.
DC-10 Stewart, N.Y. (Aircraft landed ok, burnt due to undeclared hazmat - sound familiar?). I was right behind him that morning....diverted to EWR.
MD-11 Subic Bay - as I recall, there were split airspeed indications, and they slaved the good one to the bad ADC. Went off runway end at high speed....aircraft broke apart, but crew ok.
MD-11 - EWR “Turtle” accident……


It would be difficult to imagine much larger U.S. pax carriers like Delta, United or American having a similar hull loss rate in the past 15 years and still be in business.

Will FedEx ever go five years without a hull loss? And do the feds care? Since no pax are involved is the loss rate just the acceptable cost of doing business? In my view there is definitely a double standard here and it is being continued in the new rest rules.

[Huck]

We are all AQP now.

And that list leaves off the Fx80 MD11 crash in Narita (2009) and a bad MD11 tailstrike in Subic (2006 - 11 million to repair).

You're right - just don't have the visibility of the pax carriers. If the UPS Dubai incident last year had been a pax 747, you'd still be feeling the shockwaves....

[grounded27]

In the balance of Safety and $$$ the FAA set's a double standard.

UPS Pilots Union to Sue FAA Over Exemption From Rest Rules - Bloomberg (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-22/ups-pilots-union-to-sue-faa-over-exemption-from-rest-rules-1-.html?cmpid=msnmoney&industry=IND_TRANSPORTATION&isub=)

The union representing United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS) (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/quote?ticker=UPS:US) pilots plans to file suit today to challenge the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (http://topics.bloomberg.com/federal-aviation-administration/)’s decision to exempt cargo pilots from rules to protect against fatigue.
The Independent Pilots Association will file the suit in federal court, Brian Gaudet, the union’s spokesman, said in an e-mailed press release.
The FAA yielded to “unprecedented industry pressure” when it exempted cargo airlines in the new rules, Robert Travis, president of the IPA, said yesterday after the regulation was published.
The FAA rules, which take effect in two years, require that passenger-airline pilots work shorter shifts and get longer rest periods. It was the first revision of rest rules since 1985.
While the agency had proposed applying the new measures to cargo-carrier pilots, the final rule exempted them because the costs were too steep, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said yesterday.
Mike Mangeot, a UPS spokesman, didn’t immediately respond to a call and e-mail seeking comment.

[alouette3]

This is all well and good. However, the dirty little secret in the indistry is commuting. If there is no way to ensure that pilots check into their hotel 10 hours before their duty cycle begins, all this is null and void.People will continue to commute all night long and fly all day and still be considered legal.A good way to go is to include commuting as duty time too----kind of like dead heading.
But, I am cyncial enough to admit that the airlines will never let that happen.
So, while the FAA can keep patting themselves on the back,I will continue to firmly believe that everything changes and yet, nothing changes.
Alt3

[Mr Angry from Purley]

The proposed EASA FTL in Europe may well also exclude Air Cargo Operators at the beginning also.
On the commuting front at the airline i work at (UK Night Freight) the issue of commuters is handled (because they jumpseat on Company aircraft) by a variation where crews come on duty 90 mins after the STD of the jumpseat flight.

[av8tor94]

...not applicable to cargo operations. Looking at the source document, Foreign Applicability is not well defined from what I have read so far. Hypothetically speaking, if these new rules were to be imposed on foreign carriers operating into the USA, I wonder how the issue of cargo operations would be applied. Personally, I fly for a foreign carrier on a fleet which is comprised of half freighters and half pax aircraft. I could easily operate a couple cargo flights long haul then a pax flight to the USA. Does this mean that my cargo flight duty would not be considered towards the FTL for the pax flight? Many foreign carriers have a mix of freight/pax aircraft of the same type; example, Emirates, Cathay, Korean, Asiana, Singapore, Air France, the list goes on... Just pondering. :confused:

[MarkerInbound]

PAXboy,

The domestic rules have not changed much since a revision in 1985 that allowed a shorter rest period if the next one was longer and the flag and supplemental rules were issued in 1965.

[Serafim Kamoutsis]

The proposal of FAA for pilots rest time, came to late !!!
FAA must be starting checking all air line Companies, many of them, forcing and obliging crews to fly without having the rest time....