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).

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)

 

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.

 

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???

 

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")

 

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.

 

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.

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?

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?

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.

 

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.

 

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?

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.

 

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.