Fatigue Rules Finally here?
 

On the 20th of March 2018 CASA finally released the much anticipated review in to the new CAO 48.1 FRMS legislation.

https://www.casa.gov.au/standard-pag...ors-and-pilots

Will we finally see a regulator willing to regulate the interests of safety? Discuss.

Unlikely!!

.................

Nothing will change. That (above quote) is THE get out of jail free card for the majors. The smaller operators will probably get screwed over though.

If it’s anything like my companies FRM system the onus will be on the pilot to cram in a fatigue assessment using the program to find a point along your scheduled duty where you exceed the threshold. Naturally it isn’t accurate unless you’ve accurately entered your sleep pattern for the previous few days. The program is glitchy and bogs down and you are still required to arrive, assess weather and notams for the flight, check loading and order fuel within your standard 90 minute callout. It’s hopeless..just thinking about it fatigues me

The fatigue rules have been under “review” for decades, and will continue to be so for decades.

It’s like classification of operations.

The required decisions are political, not technical.

https://s14-eu5.ixquick.com/cgi-bin/...ticache=856730


As Sir Humphrey so eloquently stated when discussing the role of government and the bureaucracy:

"Two basic rules of government. One, never look into anything you don't have to. Two, never set up an enquiry unless you know in advance what its findings will be"

A bit of digging into the little consultancy involved is an interesting insight into motivation..

Sir Humphrey did indeed say:

I’m not quite so cynical as Sir Humphrey. It does seem however that despite what appears to be an apparent gutlessness to in fact act in the interests of safety, CASA does seem to be attempting to walk the fine line between that and the commercial imperative.

It’s a little bit concerning that the process of consulting is to begin now when surely the specific concerns of the industry, legitimate or otherwise, have been sitting on the desk for some time now.

As flight crew we’re always encouraged and in many cases required by the act to choose the most conservative course of action when there is some doubt as to the safest choice in the decisions we make. The term double standard comes to mind. The review appears indeed to indicate some genuine concerns regarding safety in respect of the status quo and yet all I see at this point is the can being yet again, kicked down the road albeit now CASA have at least acknowledged empirically a problem exists that needs to be addressed. It’s not yet a solution, perhaps it’s a start.

Willie,
You should be.
The first meeting I attended re. amending (then) ANO 48, based on "scientific principles and research", was around late 1967 or early 1968.
Nothing of substance has been achieved since, despite the expenditure of mucho time and resources.
Tootle pip!!

It’s a disgrace really. The whole rule set is a disgrace. Lord knows what people from overseas think when they loook at our regs.

You don’t need to appeal to any deity. Everybody knows that Australia is the only third world aviation nation in which you can drink the tap water.

CASA know which side their bread is buttered on. Any time fatigue is brought up, the airlines immediately bleat about it making them uncompetitive, or making their business unviable. Of course the airlines will want to maintain the illusion of being safety first though. Hope CASA like their toast extra crispy, it's coming!!

Fatalities required for traffic light installation
 

Indeed it is. No one believes we'll see any substantive change to the current CASA flight and duty limits (i.e. management targets) unless there are a couple (perhaps several) fatal accidents where the primary causal factor was crew tiredness or fatigue.

Be thankful if you happen to work for a company (e.g. QF) where your contractural limits are well short of the CASA mandated limits (e.g. JQ).

I really wish I was wrong, but like the previous posters, I don't see any change to the current situation any time soon. The airline business lobbying of our politicians and regulator is highly effective and the union counter-punch completely overwhelmed and inadequate.

So, failing terrible, fatigue-related crashes, crew members will continue to fight back with the only effective weapon they have; calling in sick or fatigued.

PG :ugh:

Will the ATSB ever be allowed to allocate fatigue as a PRIMARY causal factor? If fatigue is ever involved, the ATSB will find that the crew had an option to refuse the duty, but didn’t. They will then assert that the pilots abandoned their responsibility to maintain a safety first approach. The CEO of the “victim” airline will then appear on TV in a tear jerking, lament laden press conference and rhetorically question how this could ever happen. Naaaaaa, there could be a dozen hull losses with thousands of lives lost, but while CASA is so “accessible” to the airlines, nothing will change. There is big money involved and a willing scapegoat, the future of fatigue management is very safe......and in the airlines favor.

The work is already done!
 

Australia already has at least three well prepared and suggested templates. The first is SafeWork Australia with every State and Territory on board, so it is effectively the Australia wide accepted policy. For the vast majority of Operators in Australia it would be Simple, Accountable and Effective. It would save hundreds of thousands of dollars, and let us get on with Business. A ready made solution.

https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au...-workers-guide

The Rail Authority and Heavy Trucking Industry also have one. Look at how simply the trucking industry tackled it

https://www.nhvr.gov.au/safety-accre.../basic-fatigue

I appreciate that there is a lot of self interest pulling in a lot of different directions, but Really?

That is the most erudite comment I have ever read.

It is exactly how the system is set up to preserve the status quo.

Until pilots realise that the onus is all theirs and the strict liability is theirs too nothing will change.

To airline managers regulation limits are targets. They will push pilots knowing smugly that the pilot bears all the risk

And while this dichotomy exists there can be no real progress in the area of safety with regards to fatigue management. As I have stated elsewhere, it really should be a joint responsibility but in reality it isn't. There is something about this that is ethically and morally wrong and yet entirely 'acceptable.'

Aviation managers can tell pilots 'don't fly fatigued' until they are blue in the face and yet at the same time they spend their efforts lobbying for regulation framework and structures that endeavour to extract 'maximum efficiency' (one could also read that as 'burn them out'). For all this effort, when something goes wrong, essentially they get to wash their hands of innocent blood (like Pilate of old) and walk away...

Not in my 'neck of the woods' Mate!:=

Yes and I would argue this is by design.

Pilots play their role in this as enablers. They do not understand strict liability and I can recall numerous excuses from loss of income, it will encroach on a day off to impact on sick leave to continue. They refuse to acknowledge, or simply are not aware that in keeping the show on the road, they bear the risk. This is precisely why the statute stipulates strict liability.

As Ryan air executives stated " The idea was to recruit a vibrant start-up team, burn them out, then get rid of them and put in a fresh team"

Mr Joyce said largely the same thing to an audience in the Stamford hotel circa 2004, when queried about staffing including pilots when appointed to JQ management by Geoff Dixon.

Where 'efficiency is maximised' destroying and burning out human capital, then clearly the Regulator must regulate. In Australia this will not occur until such time as the trail of bodies necessitates more action than talk.

But there is no incentive to do so...

I'm not so sure that even a trail of bodies would do the trick as the system can simply put the cause down to human error and once again blame the pilot/s. Interestingly, such events would probably also play into the hands of those arguing that pilots should be removed from cockpits altogether...

glenb said it
The problem is the trucking industry hasn't been able to cheapen the value their drivers add to the organization by claiming the truck does all the work. We are still being defeated by the notion that we sit there and do literally nothing. I've been told many a time that my job is easy and I'm overpaid; that thinking is ubiquitous in the public arena.