Air Safety And Law

As we have noted on several occasions, the disconnect between the NTSB and the FAA on the subject of safety recommendations has long been a problem and concern for aviation safety advocates. Too often the FAA’s dual mandate to both promote av

iati

on and police it are at odds, and the result is safety delayed which of course

means — safety denied! That said, we were pleased to see the FAA implement new flight crew rest requirements. While we think greater measures could have been implemented it is a start in the right direction and will hopefully result in pilots who are more alert, attentive and better able to react to emergency situations in the cockpit. The specific regulations can be found at:

http://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/rulemaking/recently_published/media/2120-AJ58-FinalRule.pdf

In sum the regulations provide a more realistic method of calculating pilot flight time, duty periods and crew rest. The regulations provide hard maximum duty days, minimum rest periods and cumulative calculations which better address recent science on fatigue. The regulations also shift the burden to individual pilots and airlines to create an environment where pilots can report fatigue without repercussions and where airlines develop risk management systems designed to specifically address fatigue issues (sleep, nutrition, etc.). On balance these changes are positive and we support the FAA’s efforts to implement these throughout the commercial fleet. Oddly, the regulations do not apply to the cargo fleet. We think this is a mistake and support those advocates pushing for extension of these regulations to cover all commercial operations, including cargo flights. To not do so endangers the entire aviation system and the flying public.Rich Text AreaToolbarBold (Ctrl / Alt+Shift + B)Italic (Ctrl / Alt+Shift + I)Strikethrough (Alt+Shift+D)Unordered list (Alt+Shift+U)Ordered list (Alt+Shift+O)Blockquote (Alt+Shift+Q)Align Left (Alt+Shift+L)Align Center (Alt+Shift+C)Align Right (Alt+Shift+R)Insert/edit link (Alt+Shift+A)Unlink (Alt+Shift+S)Insert More Tag (Alt+Shift+T)Toggle spellchecker (Alt+Shift+N)▼
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As we have noted on several occasions, the disconnect between the NTSB and the FAA on the subject of safety recommendations has long been a problem and concern for aviation safety advocates. Too often the FAA’s dual mandate to both promote aviation and police it are at odds, and the result is safety delayed which of course means — safety denied! That said, we were pleased to see the FAA implement new flight crew rest requirements. While we think greater measures could have been implemented it is a start in the right direction and will hopefully result in pilots who are more alert, attentive and better able to react to emergency situations in the cockpit. The specific regulations can be found at:

http://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/rulemaking/recently_published/media/2120-AJ58-FinalRule.pdf

In sum the regulations provide a more realistic method of calculating pilot flight time, duty periods and crew rest. The regulations provide hard maximum duty days,

minimum rest periods and cumulative calculations which better address recent science on fatigue. The regulations also shift the burden to individual pilots and airlines to create an environment where pilots can report fatigue without repercussions and where airlines develop risk management systems designed to specifically address fatigue issues (sleep, nutrition, etc.). On balance these changes are positive and we support the FAA’s efforts to implement these throughout the commercial fleet. Oddly, the regulations do not apply to the cargo fleet. We think this is a mistake and support those advocates pushing for extension of these regulations to cover all commercial operations, including cargo flights. To not do so endangers the entire aviation system and the flying public.
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