Originally Posted by
Scoop
Denny,
Thats a great question. I asked a bunch of guys and the answers that I got basically say that the Whitlow rule applies to domestic - no 24 hour shortcall. So I heard guys say they have been called by scheduling halfway into a 24 hour shortcall and put on rest so they could do the whole thing over again tomorrow - this doesn't sound right but who knows? What I am unsure of is how do they break up the domestic and the international reserves? Or are the guys all just lumped togetther? Anybody from CVG have any insight into this?
Scoop
Whitlow isn't actually a rule, nor was it a rule change - it was an official FAA written interpretation of existing 121 rules. Unfortuatly, the way it was written, it only applied to 121 domestic rules; the flag rules were not addressed. The Whitlow interpretation basically says that reserve time cannot be counted twords a required rest period. Delta could leagly schedule a SC period that is longer than 12 hours as long as any flying you do is completed within the legal limit. The 12 hour period is just a contractual limit, which is why it makes no sense why ALPA allows DL to schedule a longer SC period for international crews.
As far as cutting SC short just to put you on rest and then back on SC is perfectly legal and happened to me on more than one occasion when I was on the ER. The LA and CVG categories are offically ER so I'm guessing that scheduling puts everyone on 24 hour SC to start then makes adjustments as they see fit. This whole business needs to be addressed in the next contract.