China is reducing max flying hrs to 850
Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Planet Moo Moo
Posts: 1,279
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
1. Statistically rare for a commercial pilot to be faced with a significant emergency on a regular basis, in fact unlucky if its more than one or two times in an entire career.
2. Statistically proven that not every commercial pilot is up to the job when the time comes
2. Statistically proven that not every commercial pilot is up to the job when the time comes
Still here, along with those passengers I was responsible for, so must have been 'up to the job'.
Join Date: Feb 2002
Location: Somewhere between Europe and Africa
Posts: 154
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Very well put Wirbelsturm,
However there still some SLFs that think just because they came out of the flight alive, there was no major emergency going on. In fact it's because pilots usually deal very well with those emergencies that there are few casualties in aviation.
Rmac, thank you for taking so much time checking my posts on PPrune and trying to guess (that's what you just been doing here, anyway)who I am and what I do. Sorry to tell you that you missed it completely.
But now, go back to your seat because I've got a plane to fly.
Check Six, Krueger
However there still some SLFs that think just because they came out of the flight alive, there was no major emergency going on. In fact it's because pilots usually deal very well with those emergencies that there are few casualties in aviation.
Rmac, thank you for taking so much time checking my posts on PPrune and trying to guess (that's what you just been doing here, anyway)who I am and what I do. Sorry to tell you that you missed it completely.
But now, go back to your seat because I've got a plane to fly.
Check Six, Krueger
Join Date: Jul 2012
Location: China
Age: 59
Posts: 3
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
As a China-based pilot I can say with almost certainty that these regulations will have little effect on the situation here.
The real danger lies not in annual limits, but rather in daily ones. There is a flat limit of 16 hours flying per day for 2 pilots, and 18 hours for 3 pilots.
Minimum rest stays at 10 hours regardless of the preceeding duty time.
These limits do not change for 4 sectors, early starts, late finishes, WOCL, Night/day flying or any other factors.
If a place of rest is given whilst on duty, the clock stops. You are at work, but not accruing duty time!
Considering delays of 5 hours after doors closed are regular here and the experience levels in the cockpit this is the real danger.
The following is an actual duty that my company rosters daily (amongst other similar ones):
Report 05:15 in the morning. Fly 2 sectors and land around 1pm. Go to a unbelievably sub-standard (no star) hotel for the afternoon and report for flight preparation again for duty around 8/9pm. Land at destination around 1am, arriving in yet another sub-par hotel around 1.30am.
Recap: start at 05:15, land 1pm. Clock stops. Flight Prep@8/9pm Fly at 10pm until 1am. Total time at work around 19/20 hours in a single day. Time spent in the hotel counts for nil somehow. Perfectly legal.
Have an altitude bust? Get personally fined 12k USD. http://www.pprune.org/south-asia-far...-airlines.html
The consequences of any incidents regardless of cause have been squarely placed on the individual pilot. This rule does affect that.
So I say this 850 hour limit is a smokescreen for the real issues. If a flight crashes this rule just serves the communist CAAC leaders in that they can pretend they did something. They can claim lower annual hour limits than europe/US.
The real danger lies not in annual limits, but rather in daily ones. There is a flat limit of 16 hours flying per day for 2 pilots, and 18 hours for 3 pilots.
Minimum rest stays at 10 hours regardless of the preceeding duty time.
These limits do not change for 4 sectors, early starts, late finishes, WOCL, Night/day flying or any other factors.
If a place of rest is given whilst on duty, the clock stops. You are at work, but not accruing duty time!
Considering delays of 5 hours after doors closed are regular here and the experience levels in the cockpit this is the real danger.
The following is an actual duty that my company rosters daily (amongst other similar ones):
Report 05:15 in the morning. Fly 2 sectors and land around 1pm. Go to a unbelievably sub-standard (no star) hotel for the afternoon and report for flight preparation again for duty around 8/9pm. Land at destination around 1am, arriving in yet another sub-par hotel around 1.30am.
Recap: start at 05:15, land 1pm. Clock stops. Flight Prep@8/9pm Fly at 10pm until 1am. Total time at work around 19/20 hours in a single day. Time spent in the hotel counts for nil somehow. Perfectly legal.
Have an altitude bust? Get personally fined 12k USD. http://www.pprune.org/south-asia-far...-airlines.html
The consequences of any incidents regardless of cause have been squarely placed on the individual pilot. This rule does affect that.
So I say this 850 hour limit is a smokescreen for the real issues. If a flight crashes this rule just serves the communist CAAC leaders in that they can pretend they did something. They can claim lower annual hour limits than europe/US.
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: Hong Kong
Age: 60
Posts: 491
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Pay attention Krueger !
Captain Hindsight has shown you how to complain with facts and logic, and as a person who is invested in a number of JV companies in China (reason I was drawn to the thread title in the first place) I feel better informed about risks I take when I fly in China. By the way Captain H, from my personal experience with Chinese management behaviour, money first..**** everything else
you are right to be duly suspicious of intentions.
Wirbelsturm..I am never surprised about higher risk of incidents in military aviation (for obvious reasons) nor surprisingly in the GA world, where aircraft don't always get the "loving care" that they do in the commercial world...that's why I was specific about the commercial world, the subject of the working hours complaints, and there are two points to pick up from your post....
1. If you have had serious emergencies and you are still here, then you clearly are up to the job, but its clear that some have and are not..But the reference to your responsibility to your passengers safe is rather superfluous as I am fairly sure that you would have tried just as hard to keep yourself alive even if the aircraft was loaded with the proverbial "rubber dogsh1t from Hong Kong".
2. Time and again on pprune, journos and their publications are flamed for over exaggeration of routine in-flight events, especially failures which are backed up by other systems, including, oddly enough to me the shut down of an engine on a twin engine aircraft as well as cargo fire indications (as opposed to an actual fire), turbulence and partial hydraulic failures on an aircraft with multiple hydraulic systems etc etc, now here you are apparently indicating that my life is in serious danger when any of these events happen, without the highly skilled and god-like pilot wrestling with the controls before we hit a primary school.
I note Wirbelsturm, that you also appear to be a former single seat jet jock (correct me if I am wrong), so maybe a certain pattern emerging here between you and Krueger. Not surprised that if your early flying career puts you in the air for 200 hours a year, you might be a bit miffed to be asked to be up there for 1500 these days
Captain Hindsight has shown you how to complain with facts and logic, and as a person who is invested in a number of JV companies in China (reason I was drawn to the thread title in the first place) I feel better informed about risks I take when I fly in China. By the way Captain H, from my personal experience with Chinese management behaviour, money first..**** everything else
you are right to be duly suspicious of intentions. Wirbelsturm..I am never surprised about higher risk of incidents in military aviation (for obvious reasons) nor surprisingly in the GA world, where aircraft don't always get the "loving care" that they do in the commercial world...that's why I was specific about the commercial world, the subject of the working hours complaints, and there are two points to pick up from your post....
1. If you have had serious emergencies and you are still here, then you clearly are up to the job, but its clear that some have and are not..But the reference to your responsibility to your passengers safe is rather superfluous as I am fairly sure that you would have tried just as hard to keep yourself alive even if the aircraft was loaded with the proverbial "rubber dogsh1t from Hong Kong".
2. Time and again on pprune, journos and their publications are flamed for over exaggeration of routine in-flight events, especially failures which are backed up by other systems, including, oddly enough to me the shut down of an engine on a twin engine aircraft as well as cargo fire indications (as opposed to an actual fire), turbulence and partial hydraulic failures on an aircraft with multiple hydraulic systems etc etc, now here you are apparently indicating that my life is in serious danger when any of these events happen, without the highly skilled and god-like pilot wrestling with the controls before we hit a primary school.
I note Wirbelsturm, that you also appear to be a former single seat jet jock (correct me if I am wrong), so maybe a certain pattern emerging here between you and Krueger. Not surprised that if your early flying career puts you in the air for 200 hours a year, you might be a bit miffed to be asked to be up there for 1500 these days
Last edited by rmac; 25th Nov 2012 at 06:34.
Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Planet Moo Moo
Posts: 1,279
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
rmac,
What continually surprises me is that people constantly draw a distinction between those (like me) who were 'military' trained and those who came through the airline system. Personally, after coming to the aluminium tube world, I have been consistently pleased to see that the level of professionalism and diligence in my peer group is either at the same level or (in most cases ) exceeds my own.
I will admit, in a large body of pilots, there will be the 'lazy' ones.
I have flown all manner of flying machines and they all have a stupendous perpencity to 'go wrong'. The skill of us, in the front, is the ability to do our job, as trained, to the best of our ability and ensure that the first the paying public hear of it iis either safely on the ground or when I tell them that we have to, regrettably, divert. Perhaps we are the victims of our own success when these things get leaked to the press and then we, as a professional body, remember that what for us is routine is, for the layman, pretty serious.
Various scenarios played out in the press over the past years have caught the publics attention. I would suggest that some of these have been down to poor training of FO's and poor supervisory diligence of Captains. As the Captain it is your responsibility to both ensure the FO is capable and competent for the sector and that you enhance, guide and nurture the FO's path toward command.
Perhaps we are guilty of lazyness in both seats from that perspective but I would like to add that given the masses of flights per day that the occurance of such disasters is extremely small.
What continually surprises me is that people constantly draw a distinction between those (like me) who were 'military' trained and those who came through the airline system. Personally, after coming to the aluminium tube world, I have been consistently pleased to see that the level of professionalism and diligence in my peer group is either at the same level or (in most cases
) exceeds my own.I will admit, in a large body of pilots, there will be the 'lazy' ones.
I have flown all manner of flying machines and they all have a stupendous perpencity to 'go wrong'. The skill of us, in the front, is the ability to do our job, as trained, to the best of our ability and ensure that the first the paying public hear of it iis either safely on the ground or when I tell them that we have to, regrettably, divert. Perhaps we are the victims of our own success when these things get leaked to the press and then we, as a professional body, remember that what for us is routine is, for the layman, pretty serious.
Various scenarios played out in the press over the past years have caught the publics attention. I would suggest that some of these have been down to poor training of FO's and poor supervisory diligence of Captains. As the Captain it is your responsibility to both ensure the FO is capable and competent for the sector and that you enhance, guide and nurture the FO's path toward command.
Perhaps we are guilty of lazyness in both seats from that perspective but I would like to add that given the masses of flights per day that the occurance of such disasters is extremely small.
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: Shenzhen
Posts: 13
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
I agree with Hindsight, as the old saying goes, he’s hit the nail on the preverbal head!
After flying in China myself for over 5 years these regulations will not do much in the way of helping out the crews. I’ve seen overloaded airplanes, Chinese captains flying over 100 hours a month and not logging the time and the list goes on. On another note I have to laugh at the rule that the flight attendants will not serve until level flight, if you’ve ever flown on Domestic flight here in the mainland the first thing you hear landing after the wheels spin up is all the seatbelts clicking off, and of course half the plane stands up and starts getting things out of the overhead before you even exit the runway.
As for the safety of flight here in China, it’s a truly hit and miss (no pun intended) event.
Case in point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henan_Airlines_Flight_8387
A lot of things happen here and we never really hear about them.
After flying in China myself for over 5 years these regulations will not do much in the way of helping out the crews. I’ve seen overloaded airplanes, Chinese captains flying over 100 hours a month and not logging the time and the list goes on. On another note I have to laugh at the rule that the flight attendants will not serve until level flight, if you’ve ever flown on Domestic flight here in the mainland the first thing you hear landing after the wheels spin up is all the seatbelts clicking off, and of course half the plane stands up and starts getting things out of the overhead before you even exit the runway.
As for the safety of flight here in China, it’s a truly hit and miss (no pun intended) event.
Case in point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henan_Airlines_Flight_8387
A lot of things happen here and we never really hear about them.
