Being well-rested is too costly.

OldTownPilot said:
Apparently safety is for sale.
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Just to play devil's advocate:

Safety is, and always has been, and in many cases should be, for sale. Ask a structural engineer. How do they decide how strong to build a bridge? They follow building codes, but how were those decided? Over the years they evolved to where they are now: structural members are designed with specific, pre-decided factors of safety. I don't know the exact numbers, but say they are designed to be twice as strong as the calculated worse-case scenario. Have bridges ever collapsed? Yes. Extremely rarely, but yes. But people have died in bridge collapses, so should they reform the building codes? Should they just get rid of all risk and build them with a factor of safety of 8, or 10, or 100? (And while they're at it, build some wings and fuselages out of the black-box material, and then add four engines for the extra weight...) Also why not replace bridges every 10 years too, since aging concrete and steel wears down? Well, because of cost. Every day, decisions are made where lives are risked because of money. Small and (coldly) calculated risks? Sure. But risked nonetheless.

Now, I am well aware that my analogy isn't perfect, but I try to look at this from that point of view--you know, the non-pilot one. Part 121 air travel in the industrialized world has fatality rates about the same as travel on escalators. Impartial observers may decide that it is not worth billions to improve safety by 0.001% or less.

Don't get me wrong, as a regional airline pilot, I very much want these new rest rules to pass. I'm just sayin'.
 
ORDinary said:
Just to play devil's advocate:

Safety is, and always has been, and in many cases should be, for sale. Ask a structural engineer. How do they decide how strong to build a bridge? They follow building codes, but how were those decided? Over the years they evolved to where they are now: structural members are designed with specific, pre-decided factors of safety. I don't know the exact numbers, but say they are designed to be twice as strong as the calculated worse-case scenario. Have bridges ever collapsed? Yes. Extremely rarely, but yes. But people have died in bridge collapses, so should they reform the building codes? Should they just get rid of all risk and build them with a factor of safety of 8, or 10, or 100? (And while they're at it, build some wings and fuselages out of the black-box material, and then add four engines for the extra weight...) Also why not replace bridges every 10 years too, since aging concrete and steel wears down? Well, because of cost. Every day, decisions are made where lives are risked because of money. Small and (coldly) calculated risks? Sure. But risked nonetheless.

Now, I am well aware that my analogy isn't perfect, but I try to look at this from that point of view--you know, the non-pilot one. Part 121 air travel in the industrialized world has fatality rates about the same as travel on escalators. Impartial observers may decide that it is not worth billions to improve safety by 0.001% or less.

Don't get me wrong, as a regional airline pilot, I very much want these new rest rules to pass. I'm just sayin'.
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Totally understand your thoughts. My other push, however, is our treatment as human beings. The schedules are just plain bad for your health, and will invariably shorten your life, increase your chances of hypertension, and even breast cancer in women. Most "good" companies have day-care, gym discounts, and other benefits that increase the longevity of their work force. And, if they schedule people late at night, some even offer "shift differential pay." I think we should be entitled to schedules that are in accordance with modern sleep science and conducive to a healthy lifestyle. This, combined with safety issues, warrant attention.

J.

PS - I want to add that EVERYONE should be entitled to such schedules, from janitors to CEOs. If we have the ability to change them, we should.
 
ORDinary speaks of diminishing returns... why don't we build everything out of the best possible material available? (Well, in many cases we do...) But the answer is diminishing returns...

I don't think we've gotten into the realm of diminishing returns as far as duty day limits are concerned. 16 hours is ridic. Of course, the more you reduce the limit the more diminishing returns you'll get simply because where we're at is SO BAD. 16 to 14 you have I think good returns for safety, 14 to 12 good returns, 12 to 10 probably not as much, 10 to 8 is probably exactly the same.
 
Some have alluded to it, but it is unfortunate that safety does have a cost. After all, we can greatly improve airline travel but the cost of all the improvements would make airline travel cost prohibitive for all but the wealthiest individuals. The rest of us would be stuck driving which is statistically more hazardous and would result in a larger fatality rate for the general population.
Somewhere between the two extremes- no safety improvements or all the safety improvements ever dreamed of- is the best result for the general population. The trick is to weigh the different options against... horror of horrors... their cost.
Some examples of weighing the cost of a safety improvement against the benefit:
1. Seat belts on school buses. The initial reaction of people is that we could improve safety by installing seat belts on school buses. In actuality installing seat belts in school buses would probably not result in a decrease in school bus fatalities (statistically very low), as the number of fatalities prevented by seat belts would be low and would be outweighed by an increase in fatalities by kids wearing the seat belts incorrectly. The conclusion of the NTSB studies is that the money that would be spent on seat belts would be better spent elsewhere and would do a better job of reducing fatalities.
2. A second case. Requiring infant seats on airliners. I've pointed this one out before when this debate has reared its head. There was a push several years ago to require infant seats for kids traveling on airliners. This was dropped when a study showed that requiring infant seats on airliners would actually result in an increase in the overall infant mortality rate. How's that? Well, the number of infants who would be saved in airline crashes by infant seats would be very, very small. Requiring infant seats, however, would result in higher seat costs. The higher seat costs would force some families to drive rather than fly- a more hazardous mode of transportation. This increase in traveling by car would result in a rise in infant mortality that would more than offset any lives saved in airline crashes.
So am I saying the proposed new crew rest rules should not be implemented? No. I'm just saying it may not be so cut and dry as some of you portray it to be.
 
Where are these numbers coming from??? Billions of dollars?? Virtually zero benefit to safety for the travelling public? I'm not picking on you ORDinary since it was mentioned a few times in the thread.

I just don't think the public has the full story. The numbers are skewed, if you looked at ONLY the flights flown by flight crews who have been on duty for >12 and >14hrs I wonder how they would differ from the overall safety numbers. And the flying public really has no way of knowing what kind of schedule their pilots have flown in the past week, whether long hours or screwy night/day reversals. I just think that we KNOW for a fact that we can make aviation safer today. And therefore we have a responsibility to do it.

Long duty days are fairly rare, therefore the overall safety numbers don't reflect the level of safety for those working long duty days or day/night reversals. And because they ARE indeed rare they shouldn't have to cost BILLLLLIONS of dollars to fix. It would primarily be a scheduling issue.
 
It seems some would rather trust individuals whose judgement may be IMPAIRED due to fatigue, to make an accurate self assessment when financial incentives (vacation, sick time) are involved? TCAS was put into planes because they kept crashing into each other, haven't enough fatigue related accidents occurred to warrant a change?
 
My examples of safety cost analysis were not very personal, so I will list examples where everyone does it.
Look at the car you have parked outside. Is it the safest car money can buy, or is it a compromise? Did you even consider safety in the purchase of your car? If you compromised safety in any way in your purchase you made a cost benefit analysis in the purchase of your car.
Look around at your house or your apartment. Does it have steel construction? Is it earthquake and hurricane proof? Does it have a tornado shelter and tornado resistant construction? Does it have a sprinkler system? Is there a chemical fire extinguisher system over the stove? Top of the line alarm system? Fire escapes for every upstairs room? Emergency lighting? Safety locks on the stoves and cabinets? Again, if your residence does not have every feature I listed (plus many I did not), then you made a cost benefit analysis in the purchase of your house.
Do the same for any item you purchase, do the same in your activities such as driving (you don't speed... do you?); many of your daily actions involve making a cost benefit analysis of safety.
It is no different in airline safety, train safety, boat safety... you name it. There are more lives involved, but the same economic decisions have to be made.
 
An Easy Decision

Blackhawk said:
My examples of safety cost analysis were not very personal, so I will list examples where everyone does it.
Look at the car you have parked outside. Is it the safest car money can buy, or is it a compromise? Did you even consider safety in the purchase of your car? If you compromised safety in any way in your purchase you made a cost benefit analysis in the purchase of your car.
Look around at your house or your apartment. Does it have steel construction? Is it earthquake and hurricane proof? Does it have a tornado shelter and tornado resistant construction? Does it have a sprinkler system? Is there a chemical fire extinguisher system over the stove? Top of the line alarm system? Fire escapes for every upstairs room? Emergency lighting? Safety locks on the stoves and cabinets? Again, if your residence does not have every feature I listed (plus many I did not), then you made a cost benefit analysis in the purchase of your house.
Do the same for any item you purchase, do the same in your activities such as driving (you don't speed... do you?); many of your daily actions involve making a cost benefit analysis of safety.
It is no different in airline safety, train safety, boat safety... you name it. There are more lives involved, but the same economic decisions have to be made.
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I've flown with a guy a few times now who is working on a graduate degree in the area of fatigue and rest rules, I forget the actual topic of study.

Anyway, he's been working on a big paper on the topic of these rules and he had lots of articles and things printed out. One of them had a big chart, human error type accidents per 1000 hours plotted against hours on duty in brackets of two hours, up to 16.

The amount of accidents increased dramatically past the 12 hour mark.

It really would not cost much money to limit a scheduled duty period to 12-13 hours and have a crew time out at 13-14 hours instead of 16. And so what if it did? People buying tickets are clearly appalled with the situation now...we saw the disgust after the Colgan crash when all sorts of things were exposed. They will not notice the difference in cost that this would create. The very slight increase in staffing for airlines would probably end up being $0.10 per ticket.

Those last few hours are killer, literally.
 
Re: An Easy Decision

Nick said:
I've flown with a guy a few times now who is working on a graduate degree in the area of fatigue and rest rules, I forget the actual topic of study.

Anyway, he's been working on a big paper on the topic of these rules and he had lots of articles and things printed out. One of them had a big chart, human error type accidents per 1000 hours plotted against hours on duty in brackets of two hours, up to 16.

The amount of accidents increased dramatically past the 12 hour mark.

It really would not cost much money to limit a scheduled duty period to 12-13 hours and have a crew time out at 13-14 hours instead of 16. And so what if it did? People buying tickets are clearly appalled with the situation now...we saw the disgust after the Colgan crash when all sorts of things were exposed. They will not notice the difference in cost that this would create. The very slight increase in staffing for airlines would probably end up being $0.10 per ticket.

Those last few hours are killer, literally.
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Like I wrote earlier... I'm not disagreeing with the proposed rule change. What I disagree with is an attempt to say that every proposed safety improvement that comes along must be adopted without doing a cost benefit analysis.
 
E_Dawg said:
It seems some would rather trust individuals whose judgement may be IMPAIRED due to fatigue, to make an accurate self assessment when financial incentives (vacation, sick time) are involved? TCAS was put into planes because they kept crashing into each other, haven't enough fatigue related accidents occurred to warrant a change?
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I'm with ya. That's pretty much what I was saying before. Fatigue under current schedules can leave you legally drunk as far as a pilot is concerned. Why the hell are we letting people in that position make that decision?
 
Does anyone know the history behind why the current set of rest rules exist?
When were they created? Why were the hours chosen? Was any medical research conducted prior to setting the current set of regulations?
What are some proposals you all have for new duty/rest regulations? What medical/scientific evidence do you have to back up why your figures make sense and will make flying safer?

Nothing will change if it's approached with the notion of oh well the passengers can just pay more and I don't want to have as long of a duty day because it's unsafe.
That's not going to convince anyone except other pilots.

Things to consider....
 
mikecweb said:
Does anyone know the history behind why the current set of rest rules exist?
When were they created? Why were the hours chosen? Was any medical research conducted prior to setting the current set of regulations?
What are some proposals you all have for new duty/rest regulations? What medical/scientific evidence do you have to back up why your figures make sense and will make flying safer?

Nothing will change if it's approached with the notion of oh well the passengers can just pay more and I don't want to have as long of a duty day because it's unsafe.
That's not going to convince anyone except other pilots.

Things to consider....
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I'm not sure when they were done. I would think it wouldn't be earlier than 1959 or the early 60's (advent of the FAA). I'm not sure what they used to be, or whether they have evolved from when they were written (look at age 60 rule - from 1959/1960 until 2008 or so to get changed).

It is interesting because if this is a very old rule it would be interesting to see whether it was developed during the days of predominantly jet fleets or the waning days of the large recips. My grandpa told me that there was a lot of changes in going from the Martins and Connies to the jets. He commented that a full day in the Connie was often times LESS fatiguing than the schedules that were done in the jets. Higher workload in the Connie to be sure, but the speed and trip segments and the introduction of Jet-Lag was really tiring and from his comments it was a big deal as people transitioned from the slower machines to the jets.
 
Nothing is going to change. Pilots come on message boards complaining about the government, ALPA, their MEC, their LEC, and their company, and how none of these entities will influence changes in rest and duty rules. We want more rest, and we need more rest. Yet, we are not willing to do what it takes to demand these changes.

Honestly, we are sitting here complaining, hoping someone else will makes the changes for us. Until then, we pretend everything is A-OK, and we go about our schedules like nothing is different. We all know we are fatigued, and we know our physiological state is a detriment to safety, so why do we not act?

We do not act, because are afraid of the consequences. We're afraid we'll get yelled at by our management. We're afraid we'll lose pay, and maybe be suspended. We're afraid we'll get "blacklisted" from that next job. We're afraid the traveling public will think bad about our particular company, and will go to a competitor. Basically, we are a bunch of .

In my last four-day trip, I was exhausted. To the point I was downing coffee to keep myself awake. Added flying, delays, weather, commuting... It all added up to the point I was making mistakes. Yet, did I call in fatigued? No. Why? Because I knew if I did, I would face reprimand from my management. In addition, I would not have the support of my fellow pilots.

We are our own worst enemies. We come and spout on the internet that changes "need to happen NOW!" Yet, when push comes to shove, we just go about our business, and try to stay out of the Chief Pilots office.

So, we'll continue pushing along with the status quo. We'll fly tired, we'll fly hungry, we'll fly fatigued, we'll fly unfocused on the task at hand. We'll do these things, because we have no true leadership to support us if we say, "enough is enough." We don't stand up for ourselves, because nobody will back us up. If we say we're too tired, well, someone who isn't tired will fly in our place. So we keep pushing, safety be damned.

Until we have leadership that supports those who say "enough is enough," and until we have leadership with the balls to stand up on Capitol Hill and say how it truly is, we're screwed. We'll just have to deal with being unfit to fly every so often, and push along, hoping the other safety mechanisms built into the system will protect us. Let's just pray that those other mechanisms do not fail, because then those pieces of Swiss Cheese may just be in the proper order.
 
FlyChicaga said:
Let's just pray that those other mechanisms do not fail, because then those pieces of Swiss Cheese may just be in the proper order.
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Unfortunately, the next accident is always just around the corner. That's just a fact of life in aviation.
 
MikeD said:
Unfortunately, the next accident is always just around the corner. That's just a fact of life in aviation.
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Or as a wise crusty Viet Nam era CW4 told me when I was a young LT, "If you don't think you're going to be the next accident, you're probably going to be the next accident."
 
Blackhawk said:
Or as a wise crusty Viet Nam era CW4 told me when I was a young LT, "If you don't think you're going to be the next accident, you're probably going to be the next accident."
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If you already were the next accident are you in the clear then? ;)
 
FlyChicaga said:
Nothing is going to change. Pilots come on message boards complaining about the government, ALPA, their MEC, their LEC, and their company, and how none of these entities will influence changes in rest and duty rules. We want more rest, and we need more rest. Yet, we are not willing to do what it takes to demand these changes.

Honestly, we are sitting here complaining, hoping someone else will makes the changes for us. Until then, we pretend everything is A-OK, and we go about our schedules like nothing is different. We all know we are fatigued, and we know our physiological state is a detriment to safety, so why do we not act?

We do not act, because are afraid of the consequences. We're afraid we'll get yelled at by our management. We're afraid we'll lose pay, and maybe be suspended. We're afraid we'll get "blacklisted" from that next job. We're afraid the traveling public will think bad about our particular company, and will go to a competitor. Basically, we are a bunch of .

In my last four-day trip, I was exhausted. To the point I was downing coffee to keep myself awake. Added flying, delays, weather, commuting... It all added up to the point I was making mistakes. Yet, did I call in fatigued? No. Why? Because I knew if I did, I would face reprimand from my management. In addition, I would not have the support of my fellow pilots.

We are our own worst enemies. We come and spout on the internet that changes "need to happen NOW!" Yet, when push comes to shove, we just go about our business, and try to stay out of the Chief Pilots office.

So, we'll continue pushing along with the status quo. We'll fly tired, we'll fly hungry, we'll fly fatigued, we'll fly unfocused on the task at hand. We'll do these things, because we have no true leadership to support us if we say, "enough is enough." We don't stand up for ourselves, because nobody will back us up. If we say we're too tired, well, someone who isn't tired will fly in our place. So we keep pushing, safety be damned.

Until we have leadership that supports those who say "enough is enough," and until we have leadership with the balls to stand up on Capitol Hill and say how it truly is, we're screwed. We'll just have to deal with being unfit to fly every so often, and push along, hoping the other safety mechanisms built into the system will protect us. Let's just pray that those other mechanisms do not fail, because then those pieces of Swiss Cheese may just be in the proper order.
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Then you are part of the problem. You continued to fly fatigued because you were afraid you "...would face reprimand from my management. In addition, I would not have the support of my fellow pilots." So what? That is part of being a captain. With the position comes authority and responsibility. Responsibility to do what is right, not what is easy. I have never been afraid of doing what is right both as a pilot and as an officer in the military- I even was put under house arrest once and faced a court martial for doing what I felt was right, not easy as a new LT (I was vindicated in the end). As an airline pilot your responsibility is not to what your chief pilot wants (to some extent), but to the safety of the people behind you in the passenger compartment. As a captain you have the added responsibility toward your crew, taking care of them and ensuring they are up for the job that day. If it is too much to possibly face your CP or even termination for doing the right thing then you probably need to find a different line of work.
 
Blackhawk said:
Then you are part of the problem. You continued to fly fatigued because you were afraid you "...would face reprimand from my management. In addition, I would not have the support of my fellow pilots." So what? That is part of being a captain. With the position comes authority and responsibility. Responsibility to do what is right, not what is easy. I have never been afraid of doing what is right both as a pilot and as an officer in the military- I even was put under house arrest once and faced a court martial for doing what I felt was right, not easy as a new LT (I was vindicated in the end). As an airline pilot your responsibility is not to what your chief pilot wants (to some extent), but to the safety of the people behind you in the passenger compartment. As a captain you have the added responsibility toward your crew, taking care of them and ensuring they are up for the job that day. If it is too much to possibly face your CP or even termination for doing the right thing then you probably need to find a different line of work.
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:clap::clap::clap::clap:

Well said.

-mini
 
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