RetireAlready

Because guys like you continue to show up to work and put up with their crap. Pretty simple actually.

Toonces

This. Life without beer is not a life worth living, no matter how shiny the jet!


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BuddhaPilot73

Here's something that's been occurring recently at my operator and goes along the same lines as the 10hr rest when you do a 24hr look back. Despite how it's taught in company indoc, we're now being told we don't have a 14hr duty day limit. Crews are getting trip sheets that read 16-17 hrs. We're below the 10hr flight time, but not able to comply with the 24hr look back per 135.267. Their reason when asked why we don't have to is that our POI allows it. Believe me, I know what the right answer is to this but wanted to throw it out there anyway.

brianb

Get out!! Walk away before they carry you away in a burlap bag.

Cubdriver

This really isn't the answer, because the next company will abuse the regs if the first two are doing it. The better answer is-

• know the duty time regs for your operation and pay attention to how the company is complying with them. If it does not make sense then either they are breaking the rules, or you do not know the rules. Both situations require action on your part.
• know where to report abuses of the system if you find them (POI, FSDO, FAA Hotline, etc.)
• be ready to get fired if and when you detect a systemic problem with compliance at your firm, because we know many are not in compliance and it's easier to change a noisy pilot than to comply.

Dropping a dime is passive-aggressive in some ways, but we should just drop the dime if we think any systemic, non-compliant behavior is going on at our firm. The FAA needs insider data that it does not have time to gather it unless insiders help out. People die when the regs are not followed, and it is better to cause a firm to show compliance occasionally than to risk what happens when they do not.

brianb

It is the way if you don't want to put yourself in an uncompromising situation with unscrupulous people and hope for the best. The FAA is not known for immediate action unless there are dead bodies on the ground, remember, they have a DUAL mandate to uphold and history has shown us that they have a hard time deciding which is best for a given situation.

Cubdriver

That's what you'll do at the next company too. It's better to fight it constructively at the starting point, and you might even be able to save your job. A "just walk away" solution is precisely how these problems go untreated so long.

JohnBurke

The FAA Chief Legal counsel has repeatedly reaffirmed that all rest must be prospective in nature, not retrospective.

The FAA will pursue enforcement action for violation of rest rules. The certificate holder may or may not get violated, but the pilot certainly will in a 135 operation.

The FAA is very clear on this: rest must be known in advance, and must be free of all duty to the company. Period. End of story. If you have a duty to respond to the company, then you are not in a rest period, and it cannot count for rest under Parts 121 or 135. There's nothing ambiguous about it.

The company is correct: you don't have a 14 hour duty limit (except when exceeding flight times: see 14 CFR 135.267(c)--and that extends rest times, as well)

The company is wrong: you have a 10 hour rest requirement. That only leaves 14 hours for duty, and it's inflexible. Flight time limitations may be exceeded under narrow circumstances. Rest requirements may not.

You said that you know the correct answer. What is it?

No, there are consequences. The FAA will pursue enforcement action.

Who keeps a record of your duty and rest times? Doubtless it's doctored to show that you had rest, but always done looking back at periods when you didn't fly, correct? If you didn't fly, it's counted as rest?

The standard line is that if you can't have a beer, you're not at rest. I don't drink, but I know that if I have any duty to respond to the company, I can't be at rest. Consequently, I won't respond if the company contacts me. So much for getting rest. The FAA does not simply stop there, however. The FAA chief legal counsel is qutie clear that one cannot simply say "we didn't fly, therefore we got our rest." The FAA is very clear that the rest period must be designated, and that the pilot must know prospectively (ie, in advance) that he is entering a rest period. The period must be truly free of all duty to act for the company.

The reason that employers get away with it is that they employ people who let them get away with it. You know that if you approach an inspector and tell him that you've been flying on a schedule which has no legal rest, you'll be the subject of enforcement action. The company's records will appear clean: the company will show that you've been getting your ten hours of rest. Your issue, if you want to show what's happening, will be to refuse a flight during a rest period, get in trouble, then go to the FAA with that. No one wants to do that, and no one wants to risk losing their job or hanging themselves out to dry; consequently, few ever risk being the last one standing when the music stops and few take any effort to blow the whistle on their employers.

If you feel the situation is wrong, why do you keep the job? The 135 operator knows that you can be replaced in a heartbeat, and so do you. If you quit the next guy will do what you're doing now, which is violating the regulation. You'll be out of a job, the next employee won't care, and nothing will change. The employer will continue showing that the pilot has had ten hours of rest and maintaining clean records, and there's nothing to enforce.

The simple answer is that the situation exists because pilots will do what the employer wants; the larger picture is that it exists because there's no union protection. If you want a bigger snapshot of how it could be, look to Part 121 ACMI cargo, which has little duty protection at all, even under the new regulation. What little protection there is has been formed by union contracts, and that's the basis of enforcement (which often includes 18 to 30 hour duty days).

Bottom line: are you prepared to call your POI at three in the morning and tell him that you're on call, but that the company is calling it rest? Three in the afternoon? If you aren't willing to make the call, then you've identified the source of the problem. If you are willing to make the call and the inspector contacts the company, all they need say is that you're resting and that they'll call you after the rest period is over. There is the heart of the problem. Take your pick. Find proof.

It's not a violation of the regulation for the company to call you during a rest period. The long vaunted "one-call rule" isn't hard and fast, but the Chief Legal Counsel has said that a single call from the employer doesn't interrupt a rest period. For example, the employer calls to say that you have a flight in eight hours, and you've been resting for three. Your rest doesn't re-start because of the call (though if you feel fatigued as a result, you can always call fatigue; if you're unsafe to fly because of lack of rest, the employer faces a big legal hurdle in attempting to get you to go fly). If you're in a rest period, however, you must have the option of not answering your phone or pager or responding to the employers request.

Another way that you might view it is this: if an employer asks you to do something that violates a flight or duty time and you do it, who has actually violated the regulation? The employer may not direct you to do it, so the employer has violated the regulation, but you've actually done it. If it was a phone call, you've got no proof of the employers wrong doing, but the FAA has your flight records and flight and duty records; what will the company's records reflect, and how will you prove otherwise?

Employers get away with it because employees continue to do it, and the employers know you'll continue to do it. I used to have a 135 employer that offered me cash under the table to violate the regulation. I told him to pound sand.

That was a correct application of the regulation. A pilot that has no duty to act for the company is at rest. If the pilot knows that for the next 24 hours, he or she doesn't need to answer the pager or phone or do anything for the company, that's rest. If the pilot can decline a flight without worry (has no duty to act) it's rest. If the pilot doesn't need to carry a phone or pager, and the pilot has no duty to respond, that's rest. The pilot can be lifting weights, building cars, making love, eating fruit, or any combination thereof, and so long as it doesn't involve a duty to the company, it's rest.

What isn't legal is looking back to a 10 hour block when the pilot did have a duty to answer a phone or pager, and calling that rest. It wasn't rest.

If you can look back and find a 10 hour period during which you had no duty to the company, were free to ignore calls and pages and during which you had no obligation to take a flight and could turn down any assignment, that was rest.

If during the 10 hours of rest you had any obligation to the company, it wasn't rest, and therein is the difference.

brianb

Maybe for you. I treat it just like I'm going to buy a car, if I don't like the deal I walk away. There's always a better deal somewhere else if you look hard enough. I agree with your premise but I don't think it goes far in today's corporate world.

B727DRVR

Not to name names, but shouldn't someone tell XOJET about this? To the best of my knowledge, they are still flying the top 1% while on rolling rest.

Countless other 135 operators use rolling rest as well, from South Florida 135 to Ypsilanti, MI 135 operators. It seems that it is not just the original poster that has questions about this.

Please correct me if I am wrong about XOJET.