Airline Pilot Central Forums

Airline Pilot Central Forums (https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/)
-   Regional (https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/regional/)
-   -   AP: Pilot Fatigue to be Addressed (https://www.airlinepilotforums.com/regional/43522-ap-pilot-fatigue-addressed.html)

HSLD 09-02-2009 01:09 PM


Originally Posted by DWN3GRN (Post 671887)
I have also heard the time zone crossing reg. (US only) If anyone of your legs cross a time zone different than your origin airport, you will be limited to 7 hrs. total flight time.

I've heard one recommendation from the FTDT BRC was an increase from 8 hours to 9 hours on a 12 hour max duty day. If there is a time zone restriction, that would prohibit transcon turns (which B6 was looking for).


Originally Posted by rickair7777 (Post 671881)
It think it is likely that we will see daily legs taken into consideration. Sounds like it will be something along these lines:

12 hours max duty, no extensions.
10 hour max flight, with 2 legs.
More than two legs and you start reducing the legal flight hours. Net result would be a max of 4-5 really short legs, or maybe 3-4 longer legs.
10 hours min rest, not reducible, and starting/ending in the hotel lobby.

I'm also hearing limits on night flying, 9 hours max duty for night operations (still not sure what defines an FAA night operation, but I could guess)

cybourg10 09-02-2009 01:10 PM


Originally Posted by ToiletDuck (Post 672024)
The $50,000 question is why does anything need to be done when there are perfectly good rules in place that already protect a pilot? I guess the only thing I've thought was BS was the min of 8hrs. Bump it to 9 and call it a day. Most of the fatigue related incidents were because of bad decisions made by the pilots. Laws can't fix that. You can take a horse to water but you can't force him to drink. All a pilot has to do is pickup the phone and say "I'm fatigued" and it's a done deal. I've never called fatigue but we have called and had departures pushed back an extra hour or two and it didn't take much effort.

Pilots have been fired for just "calling in fatigued."

Your posts was one of the dumbest I have ever seen.

ToiletDuck 09-02-2009 01:22 PM


Originally Posted by cybourg10 (Post 672036)
Pilots have been fired for just "calling in fatigued."

Your posts was one of the dumbest I have ever seen.

If pilots were fired for calling in fatigue then they didn't bother exercising any of their legal rights. If my company called me to come in after a fatigue call you could bet the farm a Fed would be there with me waiting to hear what they have to say. The law is already in place and you can't be fired for obeying it. I call BS on your post. The issues that have sparked this debate were due to bad decisions made by the crew. No law is going to make someone feel perky after taking the red-eye from SEA-EWR and showing up to work brain dead tired. I'm not saying there aren't things that could use improvement,ie rest starts at the hotel and not when the aircraft is parked, but I do think these measures being argued don't deal with the issue that these people chose to show up to work fatigued. They had the choice to pickup the phone and stop everything there, with the full legal backing of the FAA, and they didn't. This has been the case in several instances. If you're scared of being reprimanded for calling fatigue then I suggest you call the FAA and speak with them on the matter. Fatigue/sick calls are the same. If you're unfit to fly you're unfit to fly.

goaround2000 09-02-2009 01:41 PM


Originally Posted by ToiletDuck (Post 672024)
The $50,000 question is why does anything need to be done when there are perfectly good rules in place that already protect a pilot? I guess the only thing I've thought was BS was the min of 8hrs. Bump it to 9 and call it a day. Most of the fatigue related incidents were because of bad decisions made by the pilots. Laws can't fix that. You can take a horse to water but you can't force him to drink. All a pilot has to do is pickup the phone and say "I'm fatigued" and it's a done deal. I've never called fatigue but we have called and had departures pushed back an extra hour or two and it didn't take much effort.

Clearly you're looking at it from a management perspective and not a pilot perspective. The science has proven that performance is severely degraded upon reaching 16-17 hours time since awake. So now you have to factor trip/line construction, commuting, layovers, among others. A lot of you guys think is just a matter of 16 hours duty and 8 hour min rest, that's just the tip of the spear. ALPA, the FAA, the NTSB, the JAA have all been looking at this issue for many years. So please don't be offended if I weight their scientific and practical opinion over that of an f/o with limited experience in the matter.

Reform needs to happen, but many folks on this site are just concerned about how it's going to affect their paycheck, putting safety at the bottom of the list. While there is an element of pilot responsibility in this whole equation, the current rules allow even the "best" companies to create schedules and push pilots beyond the safety boundaries. Schedules and seniority varies among the folks on this site, but be mindful that most of us have been subject to flying fatigue at one point or another.

So I'll ask this question of you and anyone else brave enough to answer. If you were walking your family to the airplane, and you suddenly find out that the two guys "driving the tube" only slept 4-5 hours the night before, would you still let your family board that aircraft???

TBucket 09-02-2009 01:49 PM


Originally Posted by ToiletDuck (Post 672024)
All a pilot has to do is pickup the phone and say "I'm fatigued" and it's a done deal. I've never called fatigue but we have called and had departures pushed back an extra hour or two and it didn't take much effort.

Wow, what fairyland are you living in? People HAVE been fired for calling in fatigued before. (And no, that's not the reason given.. Usually management will just wait till their next PC, say "Oh, sorry, you were a foot off at minimums, sorry, you're fired")

Wheels up 09-02-2009 01:51 PM


Originally Posted by ToiletDuck (Post 672050)
If pilots were fired for calling in fatigue then they didn't bother exercising any of their legal rights. If my company called me to come in after a fatigue call you could bet the farm a Fed would be there with me waiting to hear what they have to say. The law is already in place and you can't be fired for obeying it. I call BS on your post. The issues that have sparked this debate were due to bad decisions made by the crew. No law is going to make someone feel perky after taking the red-eye from SEA-EWR and showing up to work brain dead tired. I'm not saying there aren't things that could use improvement,ie rest starts at the hotel and not when the aircraft is parked, but I do think these measures being argued don't deal with the issue that these people chose to show up to work fatigued. They had the choice to pickup the phone and stop everything there, with the full legal backing of the FAA, and they didn't. This has been the case in several instances. If you're scared of being reprimanded for calling fatigue then I suggest you call the FAA and speak with them on the matter. Fatigue/sick calls are the same. If you're unfit to fly you're unfit to fly.

Spoken like someone who is either a management stooge, has no idea of how the real world works, or is one of the JetBlue transcon traitors. Either way, it's pathetic.

forumname 09-02-2009 01:56 PM


Originally Posted by ToiletDuck (Post 672024)
The $50,000 question is why does anything need to be done when there are perfectly good rules in place that already protect a pilot?

Sorry, but can you tell what those perfectly good rules are that already protect and pilot? Please quote the specific FAR, as well as why it's a perfectly good rule.


Originally Posted by ToiletDuck (Post 672024)
I guess the only thing I've thought was BS was the min of 8hrs. Bump it to 9 and call it a day.

Sorry, but there isn't much difference between 8hrs and 9hrs.

You ever do something like a (insert Mexico 9hr overnight here) with 1 hour of transit time back and forth to the hotel?


Originally Posted by ToiletDuck (Post 672024)
Most of the fatigue related incidents were because of bad decisions made by the pilots. Laws can't fix that.

If the pilots were better rested , they may not have made that bad decision, a la Corpex, AA at LIT, etc. Was not the 170 CA at CLE under pressure due to a sick/fatigue issue?


Originally Posted by ToiletDuck (Post 672024)
You can take a horse to water but you can't force him to drink. All a pilot has to do is pickup the phone and say "I'm fatigued" and it's a done deal.

Sounds easy enough. My company has instituted that a fatigue call now has to be ASAP'd. There's been more than one guy that's done it, and has to come into a hearing with the ERC, as well as the FAA to clarify what led up to the call in the first place. Making it ASAP, good idea. Requiring the pilot to come in and explain it, BS. And my company has a strong MEC, I'd hate to see what would happen at companies with weak union leadership, or none at all.

ToiletDuck 09-02-2009 01:56 PM


Originally Posted by goaround2000 (Post 672062)
So I'll ask this question of you and anyone else brave enough to answer. If you were walking your family to the airplane, and you suddenly find out that the two guys "driving the tube" only slept 4-5 hours the night before, would you still let your family board that aircraft???

You're right in a lot of what you said. I agree for the most part. I've commuted since day one. This month I'll stay in base roughly 5 times but that's my own choosing. I could move there but I chose not to. So I do the right thing and get a hotel room. I could take UPS and not do it at all but I know how bad it feels showing up worn out. Unless they want to force pilots to live in base what can really be done? I routinely fly 8hr days with 12+hr duty and while tiring I never felt i was excessive.

I'd like to see required accommodations for sits over 2hrs(crash bunks in crew rooms are fine) and 9hrs min rest which starts at the hotel. However I still feel it's up to the pilot to know when to call fatigued. He/she should know their limits. It's not that I'm viewing something from a management perspective just feel that cutting 25% of my days off and doubling my commuting is going to wear me out much more than simply giving me an extra hour to sleep in my hotel. The FAA has already provided to tool of being able to call in fatigue. If you allow your company to beat you down and never make the call then that's on you as a pilot since it's your responsibility too.

FlyJSH 09-02-2009 01:57 PM


Originally Posted by ToiletDuck (Post 672024)
The $50,000 question is why does anything need to be done when there are perfectly good rules in place that already protect a pilot? I guess the only thing I've thought was BS was the min of 8hrs. Bump it to 9 and call it a day. Most of the fatigue related incidents were because of bad decisions made by the pilots. Laws can't fix that. You can take a horse to water but you can't force him to drink. All a pilot has to do is pickup the phone and say "I'm fatigued" and it's a done deal. I've never called fatigue but we have called and had departures pushed back an extra hour or two and it didn't take much effort.

You way you are happy with the rules then say that 8 hours is BS. Well, that is a one of the rules which NEEDS to change.

Fatigued pilots make bad decisions you say. I agree. So why not try to reduce the number of bad decisions by letting us get a reasonable night's sleep?


Originally Posted by ToiletDuck (Post 672050)
If pilots were fired for calling in fatigue then they didn't bother exercising any of their legal rights. If my company called me to come in after a fatigue call you could bet the farm a Fed would be there with me waiting to hear what they have to say. The law is already in place and you can't be fired for obeying it. I call BS on your post. The issues that have sparked this debate were due to bad decisions made by the crew. No law is going to make someone feel perky after taking the red-eye from SEA-EWR and showing up to work brain dead tired. I'm not saying there aren't things that could use improvement,ie rest starts at the hotel and not when the aircraft is parked, but I do think these measures being argued don't deal with the issue that these people chose to show up to work fatigued. They had the choice to pickup the phone and stop everything there, with the full legal backing of the FAA, and they didn't. This has been the case in several instances. If you're scared of being reprimanded for calling fatigue then I suggest you call the FAA and speak with them on the matter. Fatigue/sick calls are the same. If you're unfit to fly you're unfit to fly.

My guess is few if any pilots in recent years have been fired for "calling fatigued." But a bet there are a bunch of pilots who have called fatigued at an inopportune time and later got a few extra line checks, or a PC from H3LL, or letters of reprimand for not following uniform standards, or any other nit picky things that could add up to reason for dismissal.

Or maybe I am just paranoid.

boosh 09-02-2009 02:23 PM

The problem with fatigue is that very often you don't realize you're impaired until you're up in the air. Kinda hard to call in fatigued at FL370. That's why you need stronger regs, to prevent that situation from ever occurring in the first place.


All times are GMT -8. The time now is 08:42 AM.


Website Copyright © 2026 MH Sub I, LLC dba Internet Brands