FAA codes for tired pilots hit turbulence

As aviation has advanced to the point where U.S. airlines are flying jets around the world for 16 hours or more, federal regulators are introducing new safety measures to ensure pilots get enough rest for those ultra-long flights.
Pilot fatigue has become a growing concern as many crews work more hours under labor contracts and investigations have shown that fatigue has played a role in aviation accidents.
What’s more, regulations on crew rest didn’t specifically address very long international flights. That led Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines to introduce its own federally approved measures in 2006. Delta developed the practices as it planned to start flying from Mumbai, India, to New York, a nonstop flight of more than 16 hours.
The Federal Aviation Administration used the Delta measures as a model for a notice on industrywide standards issued in October. But now other airlines say they’re concerned that the FAA didn’t follow the standard procedure for developing new rules and didn’t include a formal process to gather public comment.
Under the new standards, pilots can be on duty up to 23 hours, and airlines must allow 24 hours of pilot rest before the flights, 48 hours of rest during layovers and additional rest during flights.
The aim is to address the fatigue issue that pilots say they wrestle with regularly.
“We’ve got a lot of pilots out every day of the week that are just not getting enough rest at night,” said Don Wykoff, a Delta pilot and chairman of the flight time and duty time committee at the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents pilots at Delta and other airlines.
“We’ve got airplanes that can literally fly halfway around the world. The problem is, we don’t have rules that cover any aspect of that flying. They’re very old rules that never envisioned a flight that long.”
After the FAA update in the fall, American, Continental and other carriers filed a lawsuit in December seeking a standard rule-making process.
That process could take years, significantly delaying the effect of more stringent requirements that could force carriers to increase training, staffing and crew accommodations at a time of economic uncertainty.
“We’re not challenging the findings of this; it’s rather the procedure of the way the FAA went about it,” said American spokesman Tim Smith. He said American believes the safest rules come from the formal process “because the FAA itself becomes more knowledgeable and better educated through the comment period.”
The American pilots union, the Allied Pilots Association, calls the airlines’ lawsuit a stall tactic to avoid the higher cost of complying with the new safety procedures.
Without the new rules, airlines such as American have to give pilots only 24 hours of rest at the destination city and are not subject to the rest requirements for pilots on reserve before the ultra-long flights, among other differences, according to the Allied Pilots Association at American.
15/02/09 Kelly Yamanouchi/Atlanta Journal-Constitution

To Read the News in full at Source, Click the Headline

Categories: Foreign Feb 2009, Safety Feb 2009