New FAA Rest Rules and Commuting
 

Here's the real issue resulting from yesterday's reg action, folks:

FAA Enacts New Rules to Fight Pilot Fatigue

Commuting will never be touched. It would cost the airlines FAR too much money to pay the pilots enough to afford to live in their domiciles. Then you'd have the issue of making sure pilots got "rest" at home before their duty periods. The only way to be sure would be to force airlines to sequester pilots at a hotel for a mandatory rest period before their trip. It just isn't ever going to happen.

Wish I could be so confident -- but I fear this is the next step in a growing public demand to tie pilots to their domiciles, and cut short commuting.

Well then airlines will have to provide COLA based on domiciles. Eliminating commuting won't happen IMO. Commuting saves airlines $$$.

Not to mention the huge cost of moving each and every pilot to a new domicile if a base is closed. Who buys the house if it doesn't sell? Can you ask a pilot to separate from his family until the house sells in the old base? Will the company pay the pilot the difference if the house doesn't sell or sells well below what was being asked for? Will the company make up the difference in house size and cost in the new base? Never happen..................

We will see what happens...

Call me cynical, but I don't think the airlines give two ...... about paying commensurate with where one lives.

The ability to live where I want is a fundamental enabler of my career choice.

Take that away and I'm out. The airlines can't afford to pay me enough to move to DTW, JFK, PHL, etc. every few years. In addition to QOL of life and family stability issues it takes away another key enabler of airline pilot careers: the spouse's highly-compensated career.

I'm guessing I'm not the only one either.

Personally, I think it's only a matter of time. However, I don't see them requiring everyone to suddenly move to pilot domiciles. What if people refused? Where would they suddenly find thousands of qualified airline pilots?

If they are going to fix this, there will have to be a compromise on both the pilots and the airlines. The pilots will probably work longer days (spending the night in a hotel before a trip). And the airlines will probably have to pay for that room and/or provide positive space available.

Commuting fatigue should be easily fixed--all of the records are there, just have every pilot's commuting ticket checked that he/she was in the domicile 10 hours prior to report time. You can live anywhere you want, just have 10 hours of rest prior to report. The Colgan crash shows how commuting is a real fatigue problem. No other business would allow some of the commuting nonsense.

GF