First off, the FAR's are not your friend when it comes to avoiding fatigue. Even if you live in domicile, woke shortly before going to work, you still
could be fatigued depending on a host of factors neither you, your employer nor the gov'm could or should foresee. First off, 16 hours on duty. How assine is that
Ask your 9 to 5 neighbor how productive he'd be at the end of a 9 to 1 (as in 1 am!!) work day. How awake are you?? Yet this is the allowable limit to most of our duty days, and even if your not scheduled anywhere near this limit, you
could be flown to that limit on any given day, without prior notice.
Is there a solution to this?? Well yes and no. Short legal duty days clearly would lesson the likelihood of fatigue, but not all duty days are created equal. For most of us the sweet spot of our useful awake day starts shortly after we wake in our home time zone after a normal night of "good" sleep (7 to 9 hours preferable). Ideally we would have a short drive to ops, check in (say at 1000) and end (no later than) 12 hours later. So right off the bat, even with the best of start times, a 16 hour (potential) duty day would have us beat at the end of the day, let alone a real early start (before 0600) or late to very late start. The FAR's do not take into account the time of day we start work. Some (union) contracts do, but those pilots had to trade something to get/give their employers/custumers/selves a fighting chance at not finishing their duty day fatigued. An earlier post alluded to a shorter duty day at the start of a duty sequence. Another smart idea that won't happen because it would cost (your industry) money. For most of us we'll be better rested (whether a commuter or not) after we've gotten away from home and are receiving rest and transportation by the company prior to our next duty. A thoughtful adjustment to the duty time FAR's would not only adjust the legal limit to max duty day dependent on the time of day it started, but also would have the first duty day of any sequence be shorter than subsequent ones.
Commuting is by definition a admission that we don't like/can't afford the domicile our employer has us working out of. Most of us would
love to drive a short distance to work, avoid a lengthy fly/drive to start our day and the subsequent long slog home, all on
our time Not all commutes are equal and some are clearly reckless either by there length, complexity or when the pilot chooses to get to domicile prior to duty. We all make a choice when we accept employment as to where we live vs where the job starts. That said, many airlines open and close crew bases without regard to the people that have uprooted thier lives to live in these cities only to find that some beancounter has decided they can save the company a couple of nickels moving the pilot domicile to another location.
With regard to commuting, we don't need further over site/regulation to complicate our lives. As someone else pointed out on these threads, we are the determinate as to when and how we avoid fatigue (when it comes to getting to work) Redefining when we must be in domicile prior to duty will not, in its self, solve the rest issues related to fatigue before duty. The FAA and industry needs to accept the fact that pilots do get tired after long grueling day of work. Not all can be blamed on how the pilot commutes to work. We individually must be responsible for how we get to work and how we rest pre and post commute. If we don't and incidents like Colgan continue, you can bet we'll have restrictions placed of how we get to work. And you can count on the fact that the 16 hour duty day will still be there long after your obliged to be ready in domicile.