I'd be happy to answer questions, but these forums are pretty accurate. Just don't try to commute, unless your talking about driving 30 min or less.

 

Just where do you think you're going?

 

Nobody is allowed to go anywhere; until we STFD!

 

I thought people were leaving in droves, i only moved up 1 number on the new seniority list and I'm in the lower 300 range, so fairly close to the bottom. Whats this I hear that the turnover rate is astronomical???

 

The few folks that are leaving probably have either an ironclad inside connection somewhere or have been making the job fair rounds for a year or more.

You stand in line for 2 hours to hear a 20-something jetBlue recruiter advise you to "round out" your resume of 8000TT/3000 jetPIC with some community service or management experience.

Still waiting for the pilot shortage to kick in....

 

There's no pilot shortage.

 

It was always my understanding that one could never go over 16 hours RAP.

Crew services is saying that you can go up to 16 hours, and then extend yourself upto 18 hours RAP.

Example, I'm on R6. I get called a 12:00 to do a rescue flight. When I tried to figure out if this was legal, I did my FDP +4 hours and then take the lesser of that or 16 hours. So my number was 22:00 their number was max time with extension was 24:00.




Any help is appreciated.

 

Is it legal? Maybe. I'm no 117 expert. However, the work rules, ruled by the judge as a legally binding contract, says 16 hours is our limit.

Follow the work rules and stay at 16. Ask for a hotel and STFD.

 

Well, I was adamant that you are correct...cannot exceed a 16 hour total duty day. But after doing doing some digging, I found an FAA 117 interpretation (see Douglas Anderson Interpretation 2014) that does allow you to extend to 18 hours. One of our pilots had previously gotten an interpretation that seemed to not allow a RAP+FDP extension, but it didn't directly address extensions...just limits. This one I listed above does directly ask about this. It seems ridiculous that we can extend past 16 hours, but apparently you can. Just make sure that any extension is due to unforeseen circumstances, it cannot be anticipated at all. And as with any extension, you can refuse it if you aren't fit to extend it.

And like j3cub states, the work rules state we do not have to accept anything over 16 hours. They might try to say that 117 supersedes the work rules, but the judge says otherwise.

 

Thank you vegas and j3. I'm absolutely stunned that FAR117 that was created to address fatigue actually makes us able to on duty longer than the previous rules. We were better off under the old rules.

Also thank you for the work rules reference. I need to do a better job of knowing our contract.

TC