FTL Petition
 

UK residents - please sign! And spread the word on FB or Tw*tter to your friends.... This important issue needs attention.


Flight safety and pilot fatigue - e-petitions

Well done Al.

I've already signed but suggest everyone do the same.

This is not just a BALPA thing - it concerns all EU pilots, our friends and our families - because they are ones who will be taking the risks when the rostering depts at RYR and EZY et al decide that the 'never-exceed' limits for flight-deck are now targets.

The EASA proposals are mindless madness compared to our own FTLs. Why should we dumb down to these levels, I really don't know? Even our FTLs are not brilliant and there is a lot of research going on that backs this up.
Train-drivers and truckers get a better deal than we do!

Please guys - spread the word. I just looked and there are about 2,700 signatures, which is about 500 up from this time yesterday. Not sure if I can claim the credit for this!
Anyone that has a UK address can sign, they don't have to be pilots. In fact I think the public have more of an interest in this than we pilots do.
The more people that sign, the more chance this has of being properly debated in Parliament.
Thanks.

You don't have to be a UK resident, just a UK national -so expats can sign as well

This link shows that it can be done. It does require you to sign it and get all your interested friends and family to do so. It won't happen by itself. The site is secure.

If you care, Don't just stare !

BBC News - Hillsborough Disaster: Commons debate after e-petition

3792 signatures so far. Come on everyone. Get signing! This issue is hugely important, and the epetition is a good way of getting the government to take notice.

FTL
 

Must admit after 30 years of Scheduling in the UK i'm of the view in controlled circumstances i'll be able to roster better with EU FTL namely the early / late / night limits (or lack of in Europe) and removal of factorisation on ETOPS flights.
That said after 30 years of waiting for a level playing field, and all too many trips to BRU to discuss said subject i'm still of the view i'll be working to CAP371 until i retire:\

I have signed and I'm SLF.

I shall also be posting this on my facebook page as I have a number of friends who are pilots.

Is there a comprehensive and/or concise document online anywhere that describes the new proposals?

Guys come on - get your friends and relatives to sign this!
This matter needs urgent attention in the media and government before it is too late. There are only 4,100 signatures at the moment.
If Martin Lewis can get to 100,000 with the campaign to make financial education compulsory in schools, then we can do it too.

Shameless bump for this thread, for which I make no apology.

Here's the skybrary link to EU-OPS 1:

http://www.skybrary.aero/bookshelf/books/818.pdf

Page 223 is where Subpart Q - Flight Time Limitations begins. They are the rules verbatim.

And for the lazy, the document below is a decent run-down of the significant changes, complete with observations and comment. Easy to read, even for a pilot!

http://www.pacts.org.uk/docs/pdf-ban...s-FTLPaper.pdf

I've noticed over the last few days there's been a video doing the rounds to guide people (not just pilots!) towards the e-petition, for those that haven't seen it it's here:


I wonder if those of you who are members of other generic social networks might be able to link that video to your walls to open this up a bit to the general public. Failing that, a group e-mail to your contacts perhaps? Remember, we need 100,000 signatures minimum for this to stand a chance of serious debate; we will struggle if this is kept purely within the industry.

Just over 6,000 signatures so far, I'm sure that's about 1500 more than yesterday evening so maybe social networking has its uses!

Sticky
 

Mods, this has to warrant a sticky in this forum!

Just to add in an amendment to my above post (sorry, occurred to me late!)

...The above link to the EU-OPS 1 is old, and therefore factually my hasty links were slightly misleading. There were several areas for concern after its publication which EASA sought to address. Notably Moebus Aviation's report looked in depth at certain concerns:

http://www.easa.europa.eu/rulemaking...l%20Report.pdf

...and then EASA published an NPA which explained how they would amend some, but not all of the issues raised:

http://easa.europa.eu/rulemaking/doc...%202010-14.pdf

I will warn you, whilst the former is easy-ish going, the latter is not for the faint hearted.

CAP 371
 

Though I applaud the effort that is made against these totally unacceptable EASA proposals, I wonder why on earth CAP371 is being pushed forward as the holy benchmark?

I worked under CAP371 (without many amendments!) and I have never ever been so bloody tired in my life! As a matter of fact, it took me at least 1 year of full time long haul flying to recover from 4 years of that orange CAP371 fatiguing hell!

It's typical of this BritishAirlinesLPA, who probably have negotiated a zillion favourable amendments to CAP371 in their BA collective work agreement, to promote something that is so extremely fatiguing!

These clowns probably never worked a single day under pure CAP371 rules in a chronically undercrewed airline because then they wouldn't come up with such total and complete nonsense!! :mad: :ugh:

Oh yeah, one more thing: why can only UK residents or UK nationals be allowed to vote on these new EASA proposals? What about those hundreds of pilots who are working for UK airlines based abroad without any UK residency or UK citizenship? What about those hundreds (or thousands?) of UK licensed pilots who work abroad for a non-UK airline and are not UK citizens?

I would love to vote, but I can't. :(

Why can't any UK license holder vote on these proposals? What does nationality or residency have to do with EASE rules that are designed to 'level the pan-European playing field?' :mad:

It seems to me that, as always, the politicians, regulators and airlines are deliberately stacking the deck against us. http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/sr...lies/pukey.gif

Bokkenrijder
 

Just to reply to your two posts from a non british pilot/but working for an under crewed/pure CAP371 airline.

1) BALPA can only push forward CAP371 to the british government because that is the current accepted norm and it's all they can fight with. Unfortunately they can't say to government "Look we don't like these new proposals they're too lax so we want you to pick up the torch to fight against them. By the way the british standard that we've accepted for the last xx number of years is too lax too let's tighten them up even more" You can't expect an uniformed (as to FTL's) politician to fight our corner on that.

2) This is not a vote!! It's not the british public voting on an EASA proposal, it's a petition. If 100,000 residents of the UK or overseas UK citizens put their name to this petition (and i am a signatory, not british but UK resident) then this issue has to debated in parliament. Hopefully this petition will force UK politicians to fight against these proposals. This should hopefully have two effects.

a) ensure that the UK does not adopt these proposals (unfortunately each country in europe has to make up their own mind as to whether they adopt them)
b) That the UK tries to make the current EASA proposals significantly stricter that they are now for the benefit of all pilots and cabin crew in europe.

I dread the day that it is legal for my employer to give me 7h30 mins rest between duties because they have a fatigue management system. And they will because every other airline that is competing with my employer will do the same.

People will turn up to work tired because they need these jobs. These rules will kill people.

Look up Colgan Air flight 3407
Look up Corporate Airlines flight 5966

Unfortunately, the "Limits" that are supposed to be the extreme ends of the acceptable spectrum, invariably become the "average" targets to which all schedulers aspire.

I've signed it and spread the word.

Don't know about truckers but train drivers have bugger all set in law. We have recommendations by Lord Hidden after the Clapham disaster. No more than 12 hours a day (can be extended) for 13 consecutive days then we have to have a whole 24 hrs off.

Still, better than working for a living. ;)

Good sketches on video - shame BALPA hasn't pursued problems with P2F with same determination

It's good that people are signing up to get this debated. keep encouraging people you know to sign this, don't be lazy and leave it to others to do. If every person who reads about the petition gets 5 people to sign, and they tell there friends, the numbers will soon be enough.

It will be a sad day if we cannot raise enough awareness on an issue about keeping people safe, given the 100,000 that signed an e petition to get Mr Clarkson appointed Prime Minister !

Come on People.