Originally Posted by ToiletDuck

The $50,000 question is why does anything need to be done when there are perfectly good rules in place that already protect a pilot? I guess the only thing I've thought was BS was the min of 8hrs. Bump it to 9 and call it a day. Most of the fatigue related incidents were because of bad decisions made by the pilots. Laws can't fix that. You can take a horse to water but you can't force him to drink. All a pilot has to do is pickup the phone and say "I'm fatigued" and it's a done deal. I've never called fatigue but we have called and had departures pushed back an extra hour or two and it didn't take much effort.

Originally Posted by ToiletDuck

If pilots were fired for calling in fatigue then they didn't bother exercising any of their legal rights. If my company called me to come in after a fatigue call you could bet the farm a Fed would be there with me waiting to hear what they have to say. The law is already in place and you can't be fired for obeying it. I call BS on your post. The issues that have sparked this debate were due to bad decisions made by the crew. No law is going to make someone feel perky after taking the red-eye from SEA-EWR and showing up to work brain dead tired. I'm not saying there aren't things that could use improvement,ie rest starts at the hotel and not when the aircraft is parked, but I do think these measures being argued don't deal with the issue that these people chose to show up to work fatigued. They had the choice to pickup the phone and stop everything there, with the full legal backing of the FAA, and they didn't. This has been the case in several instances. If you're scared of being reprimanded for calling fatigue then I suggest you call the FAA and speak with them on the matter. Fatigue/sick calls are the same. If you're unfit to fly you're unfit to fly.