Originally Posted by shfo

This might be old but I stumbled upon the January issue of Air Transport world magazine. They interviewed Randy Babbitt and asked him about the new FT/DT rules. Here is what he had to say.


Can you provide an update on the status of the new flight duty time regulation? The Aviation Rulemaking Committee made its recommendations in September. When might we see a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking?


We take those recommendations and we have to convert them to regulatory language. We also have to do a cost benefit analysis. Then we turn it over to the Office of the Secretary [of Transportation]. Eventually it goes before the [Office of Management and Budget] and then we put it out as an NPRM. I'm hopeful that we can get it out early in 2010. One of the issues that we've run into has been that it's a complicated cost benefit analysis because you essentially have to ask carriers to run these models in their software. You have to see what the cost side of it is, meaning if we implement these changes and do nothing else, would it in fact require more pilots?

ATW Interview: Randy Babbitt

This infuriates me to no end. The FAA's job is not to see if the airlines can afford a change. This is proof that SAFETY does not come first. Cost is number 1. Completely unacceptable.