Carl, I know it's been a long time since you lowered yourself to fly domestic, but a 757 usually blocks 5+30 from LA to JFK and about 6+30 back. Now I know I am just an ignorant hick, but when I use my fingers and toes, that comes out to 12 hours. Maybe the whale can make up that three hours coast to coast but .80 just ain't gonna work in 9 hours.

You are correct that the rules would allow a two man crew to go Eastbound into Europe. It's just they can't come back Westbound and be legal. Now maybe we can start a program where we hire pilots in Europe to do one leg back to the States and then fire them, but that seems a little problematic.

I know a guy who was on the ARC and their goal was to use science to make these rules and not hunches, either by management or pilots. The science points to the fact that if you start out at a normal time in the morning that people usually get up and get moving, it is safe to work a slightly longer day than if you have to get up really early or stay awake to all hours of the night. Every pilot instinctively knows this to be true and the science clearly backs that up. So the science points to much tighter requirements in nearly every facet of our industry, but it also points to more flight time when you are working in the daylight hours like normal people do. Either you follow the science or you don't. Once the pilots break from the science, then you get into a straight economic, political, and lobbying fight with the ATA and they have much more money to spend and more people to spend it. If we go down that route we will get crushed.

So if you can point to scientific studies that prove your theories then forward that data to ALPA and let them know your concerns. If you just want to say "that's the way we always have done it" then you are going to lose. Every DC-9 and MD-88 pilot knows that it's much easier to fly 9 hours in two legs than it is to fly 8 hours in 6 legs. Maybe you haven't ever done that kind of flying or maybe a ninja captain has been away from it too long to remember. I have 5,000+ hours in the MD-88 and I remember all to well.

These rules are all backed by numerous scientific studies both in Europe and in the US. They will provide more strict requirements for almost all phases of our operation and will loosen up requirements for a small fraction of our operation.

What you and every other pilot needs to know is that pilots are staffed by block hours and not by days worked. If you get 80 hours in 10 days you would still fly the same number of hours as a pilot who flies 80 hours in 18 days. Getting more hours per day does not affect staffing. If Augmentation rules change then it can affect staffing but a careful examination of the rules shows that the flight times are based on your home base time. Everyone knows that if you take off at 10 am in Europe it's really the middle of the night body time and the rules take that into account and require augmentation.

If you haven't read the entire document you should. For instance, not many have noted that the rules limit reserve duty on short call to a maximum of 16 hours and reduce that if you are on call at odd hours in the morning or night. That would eliminate the 24 hour international short calls and limit duty on the back end of a long short call period. It takes a long time to read but you really should read the entire thing before passing judgment.