Working off of the sleep deprivation thread...

[Kristie]

Some of the other pilot wives and I were talking on another webboard (Professionalpilotfamilies at yahoo groups)... and one of the ladies mentioned that American has a 30/7 rule in which you can't fly more than 30 hrs in 7 days (doesn't pertain to international crews)...

from this discussion and our other discussions, it seems that the airlines all have different 'specs' and 'rules'. I'm not sure if Delta matches this rule or what they're rule is requiring amount of duty hours in 7 days... but what do the other airlines and/or cargo carriers have that's similar to this rule? or - is it a 30/7 FAA rule which would pertain to the same rule for all airlines/cargo companies?

Also found out that the term "duty time" is different between airlines too... for example, AMR's duty time (or as they call it - actual time) is the time they sign in to the time they sign out for the day, whereas - from what i understand - delta's duty time is the time the tug pulls back to the time they open the door at the arrival city... How come all the rules/terms are different per airline? is it because of the union contracts and the terms they use?

It's just interesting how the airlines are similar but not quite similar...so, i'm curious as to how the other airlines like United, AWA, SWA, JBLUE etc classify their terms and so forth...

 

[pilot602]

This is why the ATA fights (and has recently - a year or two ago - successfully had a new "interpretation" of the FAA duty time rule overturned in a federal court) ALPA and the FAA on stricter definitions of duty/rest time.

 

[chperplt]

The 30/7 rule is an FAA rule for aircraft certified with more than 19 seats. Aircraft with 19 or less seats have a 34/7 rule.

Duty time is generally 1 hour before scheduled departure to 15 minutes after the last arrival of the schedule.

Block time is from either close of door, or push back, until the door opens.. This does vary by airline and contract.

 

[IrishSheepdog]

We have an 8 hr restriction between rest periods, 30 hrs in 7 days, 100 hrs in a month, and 1000 hours in a year. 14 hour (dispatch) duty restriction. I say "dispatch", since if a flight is less than 2 hours, we can dispatch at duty hour 13.9 as long as we complete the segment in 16 hours.

It is much more complicated, but that's the general overview.