AIRCREW groups both sides of the Atlantic are preparing to fight pilot flight-time limitation (FTL) proposals which are due to be significantly advanced during November, on the grounds that they could lead to dangerous levels of pilot fatigue.
The draft proposals from the European Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA), the US Federal Aviation Administration and Transport Canada (TC) are quite different, but all are under attack.
The JAA faces the threat of a European Court injunction if it attempts to declare the pilot FTLs adopted as drafted, says Capt. Flemming Sorensen, FTL specialist at the International Federation of Airline Pilots Associations (IFALPA).
Sorensen had been satisfied a year ago (Flight International, 14-20 December 1994) that the European draft FTL regulations (JAR FTL) were being modified to a safe level. Now, however, he says the unmodified proposals have been put forward for adoption. These would increase average European pilot daily FTLs by 1h 30min from existing national benchmark maxima.
There is to be a final meeting of JAR FTL "interested parties" on 23 November. If, after this the JAA attempts to implement the new, unamended FTLs, says Sorensen, he will apply for a preventive injunction at the European Court.
The Canadian pilots, however, face annual maximum working hours 20% longer than those proposed by the JAA, and weekly maxima nearly double, if the current TC proposals are adopted now and implemented in 1996, according to the Canadian Airline Pilots Association (CALPA).
In the USA, the Federal Aviation Authority's imminent notice of proposed rulemaking on new crew-duty rules is to take into account the NASA pilot-fatigue guidelines published this year, which would tend to make the FAA FTLs less demanding than Europe's and much less demanding than Canada's proposals. This is causing US operators to claim that Canadian operators would have a labour-cost advantage, which contravenes the US/Canada open-skies treaty.
Source: Flight International
