David Learmount/London
The European Commission has taken over responsibility for flight time limitations regulations, which protect flightcrew from dangerous levels of fatigue.
Brussels has removed control of the regulations from the European Joint Aviation Authorities requirements for operations (JAR Ops) and intends to introduce new legislation which could be in force by the middle of the year.
New regulations covering European pilots have been under negotiation for several years under the auspices of the JAA. These will now be introduced with legislation backed by the EC.
The EC's Transport Directorate says the regulations not only are relevant to safety, but are of social and industrial importance, so the flight time limitations rules are to become an independent piece of EU legislation, backed by law in all EU countries, as early as June. Meanwhile, those JAA countries which have their own flight time limitation rules will continue to apply them.
On the rules themselves, the International Federation of Airline Pilots Association's industrial director, Stan Clayton, says the grouping is happy with most of the proposed legislation. But he warns that duty days of up to 14h permitted routinely twice in a working week for two-man crews is dangerous, and beyond the 12h recommended by NASA following its research on fatigue.
There has been an EC joint working party on FTL for two years, composed of operators, aircrew and scientists, with the JAA acting as an observer. The EC produced its draft proposal in December, and the period for comment from the industry ended on 7 February. Now the draft is with Transport Directorate air safety and industrial specialist Claude Probst for comment.
For the flight time limitation law to go through by June, the EC legislative processing system has to work without any hitches up to the council meeting to be held that month, but senior Transport Directorate officials say that it is theoretically possible. The next opportunity for approval would be in December.
Source: Flight International
