How is FAR 117 negatively impacting you?

SpiceWeasel

SpiceWeasel

Tre Kronor
Ok mine is just a mock but...

January is showing the following for my working schedule:

Block:83h52
Block in Period:83h52
Credit:92h57
Credit in Period:92h57
Days off:11

In December, I have:

Block:94h49
Block in Period:75h48
Credit :94h11
Credit in Period:74h56
Doff:18

For my December pairings, I had the following layover times: 9:45, 20:43, 12:26, 12:56, 16:37, 14:28, 12:36, 10:15, 13:41, 12:06. Carry over layovers are: 14:52, 9:53.

Average of my in-December layovers is: 13:33

January is projecting the following layover times: 12:20, 18:51, 13:37, 11:25, 13:46, 15:07, 20:34, 8:45 (CDO), 20:52, 12:47, 14:28.

Average of my in-January 117 layovers is: 14:47

I haven't done a CDO in years! I don't like them, so I don't bid for them, because I never get enough rest. Add in the 3 days of carry over flying, and this new rule is just one giant cluster.

So, in essence, 117 is netting me an extra average 1:14 minutes on my overnights, but it is costing me 7 NON-FATIGUING days off at home! I have to switch my body clock now (didn't too badly before), with show times varying from 8:02 AM to 7:36 PM!

I haven't worked a weekend in forever (it's funny that I just held Christmas off and a block of days around it), but I work 50% weekends now. I have one back-to-back pairing that gives me 5 days of work in a row (one measly pittance of a night off at home). The most days off in a row now is: 3. Otherwise it's: 2.

This is now a 9-5 office job. There is zero benefit to being an airline pilot. We don't get gobs of days off without vacation to compensate for "life on the road".
 
I'm on reserve, so I have the same crappy amount of days off that I had originally (until that section of the MOU gets implemented). However, the pairings for January are horrible. 35+ hour overnights, operate to the west coast, deadhead to the east coast and layover, etc. The company admitted that they're being ultra conservative with the pairings until they figure out FAR 117. We shall see how it all plays out.


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Min days off used to be at line 50 out of 150 in Newark.

Now they're at 25.

That was to hold 13 days off.

So it doesn't really change anything for us. Nobody except the top few percentage points of any base and seat ever had more than min days off anyway, and everybody was already working weekends, and nothing was commutable.

So really, nothing changes here. The schedules were terrible before, and they're terrible now. At least now we won't be given 5 hours of sleep during recovery operations, which has pretty much been the last 2 weeks.
 
ERfly said:
I'm on reserve, so I have the same crappy amount of days off that I had originally (until that section of the MOU gets implemented). However, the pairings for January are horrible. 35+ hour overnights, operate to the west coast, deadhead to the east coast and layover, etc. The company admitted that they're being ultra conservative with the pairings until they figure out FAR 117. We shall see how it all plays out.


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Hoping that eventually the marketing guys will get with the scheduling guys and make some changes. I think thatll happen over time bc its not efficient for anyone to have crews idle in hotels for an entire day.
 
Kingairer said:
Hoping that eventually the marketing guys will get with the scheduling guys and make some changes. I think thatll happen over time bc its not efficient for anyone to have crews idle in hotels for an entire day.
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Companies can't pull that crap in the higher block months of the year or they will have no one to fly the airplanes.

Everyone needs to relax a little.


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I'd give my left nut to have the old rules back. These blow. IMO if they would include the legal to start legal to finish part the companies wouldn't have to be so damn conservative and build in buffers on top of the rules.
 
They overdid the duty day thing too... YMMV but if we could fly 10 hours a day and be limited to 14 hours duty, that would be much more efficient and less fatiguing than my standard 5 to 6 hours of flying over 14 hours with sits of 2-3 hours sprinkled in...
 
Kingairer said:
Hoping that eventually the marketing guys will get with the scheduling guys and make some changes. I think thatll happen over time bc its not efficient for anyone to have crews idle in hotels for an entire day.
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I agree. I also wish we'd get AA's Business or better for international deadheads. I don't quite understand the island trips now. Having one person rest in a First Class seat is fatiguing and illegal, but having 2 deadhead in Coach is perfectly ok.


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cencal83406 said:
They overdid the duty day thing too... YMMV but if we could fly 10 hours a day and be limited to 14 hours duty, that would be much more efficient and less fatiguing than my standard 5 to 6 hours of flying over 14 hours with sits of 2-3 hours sprinkled in...
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We had 3+ hour sits already.

How could our schedules get worse?
 
Where I work, the schedules aren't out yet because the bidding time period is still open. However, looking through the bid packet, I was actually quite surprised at how productive some of the trips were. I expected just the opposite, and there certainly are a couple of very low credit trips like a 15hr 4-day or an 8hr 2-day etc., however there were a lot more than I thought at the opposite end of the spectrum. I think I saw a 35hr 5-day, a 32hr 4-day and other stuff like that. Two five days plus a daytrip would sure make a good schedule. Overall, the middle-of-the-pack 4-day trips worth about 20-25 hours looked about the same as they have in the past.

Constructing trips is one thing of course, and flying that schedule successfully is another as we all know.

I saw a few last days on pairings where it went oustation>hub>other outstation>other hub and scheduled block was 8:28. This recurring workday in a bunch of trips goes right through a hub after the first leg where de-icing is routine. If the line is long and everybody's getting type-4, and the next leg is block or longer, I'm not sure there is even a plan to get the last leg done if the crew goes over 9:00 before the flight starts. Re-route them to someplace short of the hub and land there and have reserves meet them?? But where are the reserves going to come from?

I agree with the sentiments above that these rules are totally overdone and way too complicated. You should be able to think in your head if you are legal for something or not, instead of counting backwards and forwards a rolling 168 hours -- that is completely absurd.

In the end, they have done very little to mitigate fatigue -- I see plenty of 30 hour layovers that have two nights of arriving to a hotel at midnight, and then on day four, there is a 05:00 report time with a day that blocks more than eight hours. That is a total failure of the new rules. All of this stuff about acclimating and theaters and longitude and windows of circadian low and blah blah blah, means nothing when that crew on day four is unable to get more than 5 hours of sleep before a LOT of flying, because they have been staying up 'til midnight the last few days.

Among the good stuff in the new 117, there is plenty of inadequacy that simply was not thought through all the way.

I'm bidding reserve until I have the seniority to wait for this to blow over...the last thing I need is to be out working 18 days a month.
 
@cencal83406, I wouldn't be bitching about Part 117, I would be bitching on how your management team is in implementing them. Same thing for the Airways guys.
 
I got an 83 credit hour line that is 4x 4-day trips commutable on both ends.

32502556.jpg
 
Seggy said:
@cencal83406, I wouldn't be bitching about Part 117, I would be bitching on how your management team is in implementing them. Same thing for the Airways guys.
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The company and "union" have both acknowledged that the pairings are a "work in progress" and that it might take a few months to get them sorted out. I think that goes for every airline out there. I don't think anyone knows what to do with this and it'll take some experimenting and tweaking to get it right. I think the main goal is no one wants to get caught with their pants down. I certainly didn't expect things to be perfect right out of the gate. If they're still this bad by summer, then we'll have issues.


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Seggy said:
@cencal83406, I wouldn't be bitching about Part 117, I would be bitching on how your management team is in implementing them. Same thing for the Airways guys.
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How many hard lines are there in IAH 737? The large amount probably helps get a lot of quality pairings. Don't forget I fly a lot of regional like pairings.
 
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