Originally Posted by
JetJock16
OK, I plan on researching this once I get home, but:
A buddy of mine flies for Mesa; 2 days ago this situation occurred and his chief, as well as crew support, all said this was legal. I do not; I think they pulled the wool over his eyes.
I’m posting this, not because I want an immediate answer, but so that we can discuss and learn. If there’s some sort of loop hole I would like to know about.
In short here’s what happened.
He was scheduled for a 14 hour duty day that stretched to 16:30 before his deadhead home. The deadhead was a 2 ˝ hour flight, by the time his day was finished he was on duty for 19:15. His chief said this was legal because the deadhead was counted as part 91, seeing that he wasn’t part of the FLT crew, even though the flight was operated under part 121. Also that he was scheduled for 14 hours and since there wasn’t a change to his schedule, “legal to start, legal to finish.”
I understand this to be illegal, when working for an air carrier you MUST be able to look back over a 24 hour period and see at least 8 hours of rest, PERIOD!!!!!
Did my friend unknowingly break the reg or am I wrong?
He was illegal the minute he went 16:01. The only way that you can go over 16 hours of duty (this includes dead heads) is that once you are IN THE AIR then unexpected delays can push the time up. If you are sitting at the gate and you are at 14:30 duty, and the flight is scheduled for 1:31, you cant even start the flight. If you taxi out and dont get to the runway till 14:31, then you have to go back to the gate because you will not be able to complete the flight before reaching 16 hours. The 16 hour rule is almost impossible to break. It would almost have to be the perfect circumstances for you to be able to do it. And dead heads are not part 91.
What your friend needs to do is hurry up and fill out whatever report they have at mesa, we have flight safety reports, and get that done asap!!