Originally Posted by
saab2000
I am stunned that there are pilots who will talk all day long about safety and then when a significant safety-related rule is about the come down from the authorities they start getting nervous about fewer days off.
The science is done. The debate is over. 16 hour workdays in a safety-critical industry are not safe.
Let the chips fall where the may regarding schedules. But this change has been a long time coming and if folks start to get weak kneed about it maybe it won't happen and we can just keep flying from 6AM until 10PM. Anyone who works on the east coast in places like PHL, LGA, EWR, JFK knows that there are plenty of these days.
This change must happen sooner rather than later.
Exactly. I don't think half of the people screaming about days off have actually worked a 16 hour duty day with 8 hours of flying. I've done it plenty, and it's not safe.
Remember, our first priority is safety. We have real actual people sitting behind us when we're flying: women, children, grandmas, grandpas, fathers, sons, daughters, mothers, the works. Would any one of you be comfortable looking any one of them in the eye and saying "Well ma'am, we could have brought our maximum duty days to 12 hours and made it less probable that you'll die in a fiery crash, but we decided that we like our days off better"?
Me personally, I'd feel like a dirtbag for that. It's extremely selfish, hypocritical, and shows disregard for the one thing we
say we hold as our #1 goal: that is, keeping the flying public
safe.
So, ask yourselves this: Do you actually care about safety, or do you just
say you do? Here's where we can tell the difference.