Originally Posted by
The Chow
It was always my understanding that one could never go over 16 hours RAP.
Crew services is saying that you can go up to 16 hours, and then extend yourself upto 18 hours RAP.
Example, I'm on R6. I get called a 12:00 to do a rescue flight. When I tried to figure out if this was legal, I did my FDP +4 hours and then take the lesser of that or 16 hours. So my number was 22:00 their number was max time with extension was 24:00.
Any help is appreciated.
Well, I was adamant that you are correct...cannot exceed a 16 hour total duty day. But after doing doing some digging, I found an FAA 117 interpretation (see Douglas Anderson Interpretation 2014) that does allow you to extend to 18 hours. One of our pilots had previously gotten an interpretation that seemed to not allow a RAP+FDP extension, but it didn't directly address extensions...just limits. This one I listed above does directly ask about this. It seems ridiculous that we can extend past 16 hours, but apparently you can. Just make sure that any extension is due to unforeseen circumstances, it cannot be anticipated at all. And as with any extension, you can refuse it if you aren't fit to extend it.
And like j3cub states, the work rules state we do not have to accept anything over 16 hours. They might try to say that 117 supersedes the work rules, but the judge says otherwise.