New pilot fatigue rule faces delay, FAA says

Senator responds angrily in hearing

by Jerry Zremski
News Washington Bureau Chief
December 02, 2009, 12:17 AM / 0 comments

WASHINGTON — A new federal proposal for combating pilot fatigue may still allow pilots to commute on red-eye flights the night before going to work — just as the co-pilot of the doomed Continental Connection Flight 3407 did.
And release of that pilot fatigue proposal, which originally was set to take place by the end of this year, has been pushed back to early 2010.
The Federal Aviation Administration's top safety official revealed those details of the agency's anti-fatigue effort at a Senate hearing Tuesday.
And the chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees aviation safety was enraged to hear that the agency wasn't moving more quickly and decisively in response to the crash of Flight 3407 in Clarence Center in February, which claimed 50 lives.
"What I don't quite understand is that when we finish this whole process, nothing will have changed with respect to the circumstances that existed in that cockpit regarding fatigue," said Sen. Byron L. Dorgan, D-N.D.
Noting that both the pilot and co-pilot of Flight 3407 commuted to their Newark duty station from thousands of miles away shortly before boarding Flight 3407, Dorgan said pilot fatigue likely played a key role in the crash.
Once the new federal pilot fatigue rules are in place, "I don't think we will have altered the circumstances" that allowed the Flight 3407 pilot to commute to Newark from his Florida home and the co-pilot to fly in from Seattle, Dorgan said. "Somehow, I think we must."
The FAA official who testified at the hearing, Associate Administrator Peggy Gilligan, acknowledged that pilot commuting could create a risk that pilots will arrive on the job tired.
"Whether we address it in the rule itself or in guidance and training materials for the pilots at the airlines ... we agree with you that it is a risk factor that must be addressed," Gilligan said.
However, the committee that began drawing up the new fatigue rules earlier this year did not recommend any new controls on pilot commuting.
"They recommended that we continue to view that as a pilot responsibility," she said.
FAA officials are at work now to figure out if the issue should be addressed in the new rules, but other witnesses said that may not be easy.
"What we have here is a problem, but it's a difficult problem to address in a regulatory format," said William R. Voss, president and chief executive officer of the Flight Safety Foundation.
Pilots largely oppose any new controls on commuting because that could limit where they could live, but that's not simply a matter of lifestyle choice, said Capt. John Prater, president of the Air Line Pilots Association.
"I know pilots who have had five base changes in one year," Prater said. "You just can't move."
Besides, he stressed that commuting is just one facet of the fatigue issue.
The co-pilot of Flight 3407, Rebecca L. Shaw, flew from Seattle to Newark as a passenger on other flights, but under current federal rules, "she could have flown those flights as a pilot the night before and then been able to fly that flight to Buffalo," Prater said.
That's because the U.S. rules governing pilot flight time and duty time are grossly out of step with the rules set by other countries, which base their rules on scientific research into rest and fatigue.
The National Transportation Safety Board has been pushing for new fatigue guidelines as one of its "most wanted" recommendations for nearly 20 years, and more than 200 people have died in flights where fatigue played a role in that time period, Dorgan noted.
"It's essential" that the rules be modernized, said Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. "This has languished for more than half a century."
Yet the proposed new rules won't be ready as promised by the end of this year, Gilligan acknowledged.
Drawing up the new rules is "a difficult and complicated effort" that is taking longer than expected, she said.
The FAA now expects to complete a proposal by the end of January, although other agencies then may take months to review it.
Gilligan offered a few hints at what that rule might look like.
For one thing, she said, the agency is likely to reject one of the airline industry's suggested methods for preventing pilot fatigue: "controlled napping."
"Previous NASA research provides overwhelming evidence that controlled napping significantly mitigates fatigue risk," said Basil J. Barimo, vice president of operations and safety at the Air Transport Association.
Nevertheless, Gilligan said: "I don't expect we will be proposing that." She also said the FAA will offer one framework for all airlines to follow regarding pilot fatigue, even though the industry suggested tailoring the rules to different flying environments.