averettpilot
Well-Known Member
So what we're now saying is the thing that clarifies the "grey" area has its own grey area?
Part 135 operators who are by the book (or at least try really hard to be)
- Thread starter flyinghedgehog
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Dugie8
Well-Known Member
ooookaaay,
There is no having a conversation if that's the standard. I can't prove a negative, only what is written.
Anyway, my point(s) weren't to advocate FOR being on call, only to give the examples to help folks PROVE they have LEGAL rest. All the other stuff is up to the individual operator to mitigate, ie fatigue, staffing, etc.
AND AGAIN, I never once advocated for being on call as a "good" staffing policy, I want DEFINED DUTY PERIODS.
ppragman
FLIPY FLAPS!
Regularly assigned duty periods are a thing too - look in 135.267.
Dugie8
Well-Known Member
Yes, I know about .267. Not exactly what "we" are trying to get at here. More along the lines of "You dutied off at 10 pm, you are automatically in rest for 10 hours" Or "On the road duty starts at 8am local and ends at 6pm local". Not so much for exceeding the 10 hours of flight time in a 24 hour period.
We did the regularly assigned duty periods at AirMed, 7am to 7pm at the airport but they tried to pull the "on call is rest" thing for the night shifts because we were at home on the night shifts. I had a few phone conversations with the folks in DC about it (if you call that number on all those LOIs someone actually answers the phone!)
Boris Badenov
This is no laughing matter.
Correct.
gotWXdagain
Polished Member
I think we're talking the difference between short and long call reserve, as how the airlines did it. (still do?)
Perfectly legal to have you on call for three days straight, call you at 5pm and say "Your duty starts at 3am, here's your flight assignment, you are now on rest." Prudent? Fair? Arguably no, but legal. This is long call.
What isn't legal is if it were the same situation except the phone call was "Go pick up client at X and take them to Y, be wheels up in an hour." That can only be legal if the completion of the trip happens within 14 hours of the beginning of the on-call period. This is short call.
Long Call should also not be used to "look back" for the purposes of finding contiguous 24 hour rest periods.
Perfectly legal to have you on call for three days straight, call you at 5pm and say "Your duty starts at 3am, here's your flight assignment, you are now on rest." Prudent? Fair? Arguably no, but legal. This is long call.
What isn't legal is if it were the same situation except the phone call was "Go pick up client at X and take them to Y, be wheels up in an hour." That can only be legal if the completion of the trip happens within 14 hours of the beginning of the on-call period. This is short call.
Long Call should also not be used to "look back" for the purposes of finding contiguous 24 hour rest periods.
Dugie8
Well-Known Member
https://www.faa.gov/about/office_or...ps/2013/new - (2013) legal interpretation.pdf
I knew I had read this somewhere.
135.267(c) really doesn't or can't apply to a good number of charter operators because our schedules are almost always changing. Works great for Air Ambo type ops.
From the letter:
I knew I had read this somewhere.
135.267(c) really doesn't or can't apply to a good number of charter operators because our schedules are almost always changing. Works great for Air Ambo type ops.
From the letter:
averettpilot
Well-Known Member
Ok, well I guess some one needs to write to Chief Council and have them interpret known in advance and prospectively determined.
D
Deleted member 27505
Guest
If you we're having any doubts, that's what I heard you say. @Boris Badenov is a genius, but all bets are off when he hits the crack pipe. Personally, I favor the crank... that's why I don't care about duty limits.
(official disclaimer for officious spiders: this is a joke)
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Boris Badenov
This is no laughing matter.
I'm pretty sure people have already written. One of the legacies of the dual mandate is that the agency has a proclivity for ignoring questions which are politically inconvenient.
CoffeeIcePapers
Well-Hung Member
I have only seen one NTSB report where fatigue was listed as the probable cause. According to this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26929259
Only 20% of accidents listed fatigue as probable, contributing factor or finding. That is across all of the NTSB accidents, which includes auto, marine, and railroad accidents.
I think I didn't make my point clear enough. Because it is hard to prove, and there aren't a lot of accidents that list it as the primary cause of the accident, it doesn't get as much attention as it should. There are entire industries that operate under illegal 24/7 on call rules. Ad Hoc freight being one of them. I don't know of a single operator in that segment that doesn't run 24/7.
Also, these companies have the mentality that they have always operated this way, and an accident hasn't happened, so they keep operating that way. I'm not saying it is right, I am just saying that these companies won't comply with the regulation and numerous letters of interpretations because:
A. They have always done it that way
B. The FSDO overseeing the operation doesn't enforce the regulations
Until airplanes start dropping out of the sky with the FAA and NTSB blaming pilot fatigue as the primary cause of the accident, there isn't much that is going to change. The easiest way to motivate these companies is to threaten their certificate.
Inverted25
Well-Known Member
I work for a company that does scheduling as follows. Every month you get to pick 9 days that they cannot touch you. For the rest of the month scheduling works as follows. If your not assigned a trip for the next day by 5pm then your off. For example if your off today they must assign you a trip by 5pm today for tomorrow. If 5pm comes and go with no assigned trip your off the next day. There is absolutely no on call at this company. The only pop up trips you can be assigned are ones which can be completed within your 14 duty day following a trip already completed. For example if you complete a trip with 6 hours of duty left they can put you on another trip that finishes within that already started duty period. If they do this you get pop up pay for that trip. Also overtime for the month starts on day 14. So any flying over 13 days for the month is paid overtime rate for each day which is 200 bucks a day. It's works out well. Last year I averaged 13 days and 3 overnights a month. Pay is NBAA on the high side.
DPApilot
GUYSH! GUYSH! GUYSH!
You work here. You lose. Gear up, biaaaatch.
hook_dupin
Well-Known Member
My view: prospective is simply "before."
Legal: "You begin crew rest at the end of this phone call for a 0800 trip tomorrow."
Not Legal: "The last time you were on duty was 6 hours ago. We need you to show up in 4 hours for a flight."
Things are still pretty awful on the 121(regional) side. Every one of them is short staffed, so schedules are suffering. It's still better than any 135 gig I ever worked though.
ppragman
FLIPY FLAPS!
This makes me wonder - one day when we have spaceships that can go really fast or violate causality...I wonder how we'll handle the issue of duty time. I'm sure there will be skeezy companies saying things like, "Look, I know that in your reference frame it was a 36 hour shift...but HQ was accelerating, and for us in the office it appears you were only on duty for 12 hours - you were totally legal!"
