FAA codes for tired pilots hit turbulence

As aviation has advanced to the point where U.S. airlines are flying jets around the world for 16 hours or more, federal regulators are introducing new safety measures to ensure pilots get enough rest for those ultra-long flights.

Pilot fatigue has become a growing concern as many crews work more hours under labor contracts and investigations have shown that fatigue has played a role in aviation accidents.

What’s more, regulations on crew rest didn’t specifically address very long international flights. That led Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines to introduce its own federally approved measures in 2006. Delta developed the practices as it planned to start flying from Mumbai, India, to New York, a nonstop flight of more than 16 hours.

The Federal Aviation Administration used the Delta measures as a model for a notice on industrywide standards issued in October. But now other airlines say they’re concerned that the FAA didn’t follow the standard procedure for developing new rules and didn’t include a formal process to gather public comment.

Under the new standards, pilots can be on duty up to 23 hours, and airlines must allow 24 hours of pilot rest before the flights, 48 hours of rest during layovers and additional rest during flights.

The aim is to address the fatigue issue that pilots say they wrestle with regularly.

“We’ve got a lot of pilots out every day of the week that are just not getting enough rest at night,” said Don Wykoff, a Delta pilot and chairman of the flight time and duty time committee at the Air Line Pilots Association, which represents pilots at Delta and other airlines.

“We’ve got airplanes that can literally fly halfway around the world. The problem is, we don’t have rules that cover any aspect of that flying. They’re very old rules that never envisioned a flight that long.”

After the FAA update in the fall, American, Continental and other carriers filed a lawsuit in December seeking a standard rule-making process.

That process could take years, significantly delaying the effect of more stringent requirements that could force carriers to increase training, staffing and crew accommodations at a time of economic uncertainty.

“We’re not challenging the findings of this; it’s rather the procedure of the way the FAA went about it,” said American spokesman Tim Smith. He said American believes the safest rules come from the formal process “because the FAA itself becomes more knowledgeable and better educated through the comment period.”

The American pilots union, the Allied Pilots Association, calls the airlines’ lawsuit a stall tactic to avoid the higher cost of complying with the new safety procedures.

Without the new rules, airlines such as American have to give pilots only 24 hours of rest at the destination city and are not subject to the rest requirements for pilots on reserve before the ultra-long flights, among other differences, according to the Allied Pilots Association at American.

Delta has asked to intervene in the airlines’ lawsuit, saying if it is successful, it could affect Delta’s “ability to sustain safe and economically viable operations” on ultra-long flights, according to Delta’s court filing. Another revision in industry safety measures could allow other carriers to comply with less-costly practices compared with what Delta already uses, putting Delta at a competitive disadvantage. For example, other airlines may be able to operate with only one captain on board among the four pilots and still be in compliance, while Delta uses a more costly system of having two captains on board among the four pilots.

To develop its program, Delta worked with scientists and did a sleep study with crews.

“They were the first U.S. carrier to do this,” Wykoff said. “They wanted to do the right thing.”

Now, Delta uses the procedures developed for the 2006 safety measures to allow pilots 48 hours of rest in between ultra-long flights and allow more rest time for pilots before flights. Delta staffs its long flights with four pilots and has special crew bunks above the cabin for pilots to rest in.

Delta uses the same procedures for its 13-hour Atlanta-Dubai flights, plans to use them for its 15-hour Atlanta-Johannesburg, South Africa, flights to start this summer and could add more ultra-long flights in the future as it takes delivery of more Boeing 777s capable of the long flights.

Fatigue in aviation is a long-standing issue. Last year the National Transportation Safety Board said it is “extremely concerned about the risk and the unnecessary danger that is caused by fatigue in aviation,” adding that “we have seen too many accidents and incidents where human fatigue is a cause or contributing factor.” The board cited several incidents, including a Delta Connection flight operated by Shuttle America in 2007 in which the plane overran the runway while landing at Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport. Fortunately, no passengers or crew members were seriously injured.

In the short term, the new safety measures are important because in absence of updated rules, “there needs to be something in place,” said Allied Pilots Association official Doug Pinion.

The FAA said the newly implemented measures can accommodate technological advances in the industry, and that it does not plan to start a new rule-making process.

But the pilot unions would like to eventually see the rules formally changed to better prevent fatigue on long and short flights.

The Allied Pilots Association is also interested in studying whether four pilots are sufficient for ultra-long-range flights, an issue that the union said Delta may have been trying to sidestep when it drew up its own measures.

“They’ve kind of painted the industry into a corner, and they haven’t even considered or done any scientific study on what would be the benefit of having five or six pilots on the airplane,” said the Allied Pilots Association’s Mike Rossetti. “The chances of an accident go up a lot after a person’s been on duty for over 13 hours.”