The biggest truth coming out of this investigation is that it is very common to find pilots and flight attendants working for days at a time suffering from sleep deprivation. Another truth is that the FAA and the airlines are in cahoots about it and the biggest FALSEHOOD is the fake "shock" that the Congresspeople are showing over how pilots (and flight attendants) are forced to live. These are rules and regulations that the FAA has had in place for years and pilots and f/a's have been up in arms about it for decades.
While the move is on to blame the pilot and first officer for not following company policy and sleeping in the crew room the reality is that airlines (all of them) participate in this "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" game with the full support and realization of the FAA. The unfortunate truth is that the captain lied about his qualifications and that is not good but the other part of that paints a far darker picture and one that is scarier.
Pilots and F/A's work days are governed by the FAA and Union contracts. Sometimes the unions are able to negotiate better work rules than the FAA standard but in some cases they are not. This article shows the length that airlines went to overturn an FAA ruling on crew rest. Some airlines actually objected to an FAA ruling forcing airlines to give pilots 8 hours of rest a day.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0UBT/is_22_16/ai_87073652/
In 2006, most US airlines (minus NWA and Delta) sued the FAA to stop the implementation of higher rest requirements for pilots flying "long haul" flights over 16 hours. The FAA capitulated and rescinded their rule change.
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE50449N20090105
And here is another reality. 16 hour duty days are the STANDARD in the industry. A single trip for inflight crews can last five days for domestic trips and can go to eight days (or more) for international trips at NWA. A five day domestic trip at NWA can result in a pilot being "on duty" for 5 days for 16 hours a day, or 80 hours and fly as much as 35 of those. That would almost certainly result in serious sleep deprivation by days three, four and five. From the Buffalo News below is a look at some realities of this standard of scheduling.
From the Buffalo News:
16-hour days questioned
The pilots union thinks that 16- hour duty days are too long and that schedules should reflect whether the pilot is flying during the day, or at night, when the body expects to be sleeping. Pilot concern stems from the duty time when a pilot is in uniform, not necessarily behind the controls.
“Even though you’re not allowed to go over eight hours,” Edwards said of the FAA maximum flight time, “you can take 16 hours to fly that eight hours.”
Edwards, unlike most commercial pilots, is not afraid of losing his job if he goes on the record and uses his name. He was fired from Gulfstream International Airlines in Florida because he refused to fly a plane that he said lacked an important piece of safety equipment. He has filed a lawsuit to get his job back, and the case is pending in Broward County.
In his nine years in the cockpit, Edwards has flown for three regional airlines and, despite living in Phoenix, commuted to work in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Dayton, Ohio, and Charlotte, N. C.
The commute, he said, is another grind that adds to fatigue. Flight 3407’s captain, Renslow, lived in Florida, and first officer Shaw commuted from Washington State.
Edwards points to a number of situations with regional airlines that cause pilot fatigue:
• Airlines schedule pilots for the maximum they are allowed to fly in a day. They don’t account for delays caused by weather, mechanical problems or traffic.
• Brief layovers, followed by another ultralong day.
• Some regional aircraft do not have autopilot, and manual flying fatigues a pilot much quicker.
• Lack of food. “The flight schedules don’t allow a crew to stop and eat a sit-down lunch.”
• Multiple aircraft swaps during the day.
• Lack of adequate crew room facilities. “Many crew break rooms have two or three chairs and numerous crew members standing or sitting on the floor.”
“In my mind,” Edwards said, “crew fatigue, particularly at the commuter-regional level, is very dangerous and very real. I’ve personally felt the effects of it at times during my career. The problem is, it tends to creep up on you. Usually, we get away with it.”
All of these are huge issues on their own but compounded together the results do cost lives. The FAA has been in the pocket of US Airlines for far too long. The truth is that if forced to change their policies, airlines will and since all airlines have to play by the same rules, costs associated with those changes would be competitively applied and no airline would have an advantage about it.
It is time that we turn the heat up on our air safety system and make some fundamental changes in how the industry is regulated and make it safer for everyone.
