New Flight & Duty Limits

[Ozgrade3]

Over the last couple of week the guys at work have been looking at the flight & duty limits that we will be transitioning to in the next 6-12 months. Interestingly they have made a special section for flight instructors which is good or bad depending on your view.

Duty time limits are up as are the max hrs in a month 8 year.

One interesting point is that there seems to be no limit on consecutive days you can fly. As far as we can tell, its only in relation to your employment. That is fly 5 days and on the weekend do some private flying. A boon for the guys working on instrument ratings or ones like myself who often go away for the weekend but as we cant fly 7 days in a row, a 1 hr easy flight is replaced with a 5hr tedious, tiring and boring drive.

or are we reading it all wrong?

[Martin VanNostrum]

I might be wrong but I always understood that private flying did not count under flight and duty limitations.

[The Green Goblin]

Private flying counts towards your cumulative annual/monthly/weekly totals, but not your duty.

So yes, you could always work during the week and fly on the weekends privately as long as it didn't affect your 'available' hours for your employer.

My employer lists hours in the EBA we can fly privately. Anything greater than that requires permission from the CP or delegate.

[djpil]

Private flying counts towards your cumulative annual/monthly/weekly totals, but not your duty.Seems to me that the new rules are the same as the old wrt duty however the new rules are clearer.recreational private operation means flying conducted by an FCM in a personal capacity, and at and for the FCM’s leisure.

Note A flight conducted by an FCM as a private operation is not a recreational private operation if it is conducted for, or on behalf of, an entity, regardless of whether or not the entity is an AOC holder.
The new rules also now exclude recreational private operations from cumulative flight time which seems very sensible to me - I would do something equally or more tiring if I didn't take the biplane for a relaxing run.

A couple of CFI's bullied me by trying to say that the specific words in the old rules (and their Ops Manuals) meant something different. Claimed that some-one in CASA bullied them. Claimed that AATA 1092 (18/10/2004) warranted that but it seemed to me that simply supported the rules as written.
Boss didn't like it when I cancelled booked flights because of my leisure activities the day before. I was OK per the rules but not per the bullies' verbal version of the rules. 15 minutes of relaxation in the biplane one day cost me the next day's wages. Boss didn't like it when I told him I'd be happy to book duty time if he changed the Ops Manual to reflect the verbal instructions and if he wants to pay me for it.

Noted article in newspapers recently about Safe Work Australia's new code on preventing and responding to workplace bullying - good advice for some people.
Noted also a recent article on psychopaths in the workplace - I avoid those in the first place.