Mon, May 17, 2004
Says Government "Back-Tracked" On Previous Interpretation
The head of the union that
represents most of the nation's airline pilots has condemned an FAA
action to back-track on a previous interpretation that would have
required airlines to maintain a "do not call" list for pilots who
do not want to be wakened during required rest periods.
"They bowed to industry pressure, pure and simple," said Capt.
Duane Woerth, president of the Air Line Pilots Association,
International. "At our request, FAA had issued a written
interpretation of their regulations, an interpretation clearly
spelling out that airlines must take note of written requests from
pilots not to be interrupted during their required rest and sleep
cycle. But the minute the airlines objected, FAA started
back-tracking. Now they say that they didn't mean what they
wrote."
The interpretation in question came in a Nov. 7, 2003 letter to
ALPA responding to ALPA's request for a clarification of under what
circumstances an airline could or could not interrupt a pilot's
sleep with telephone calls. Specifically, the FAA wrote:
"Further, a flight crew
member can provide written notification to the air carrier of his
or her desire not to be contacted while on rest periods (or the
conditions under which contact should not be attempted). If an air
carrier receives such a 'do not call' letter from a flight crew
member, then the carrier is on actual notice that its attempts to
contact the pilot during the rest period could disrupt the pilot's
attempts to sleep. In such a situation, unlike the situations
summarized in footnote 1, even one phone call from the carrier to
the pilot is evidence that the carrier has broken the pilot's
continuous rest period, and the rest period must begin anew before
the carrier could use the pilot in Part 121 domestic
operations."
"I defy anyone who reads that passage to tell me that the FAA
wasn't putting airlines on notice that they had to accept written
requests from pilots and honor those requests. We didn't
introduce the term 'do not call list' into the ruling, that
literally is what the FAA said. But now they've
'reinterpreted their interpretation' to the point where they've
totally reversed themselves," Woerth said.
"We will reformulate our guidance to pilots based on this new
letter. As part of a more comprehensive approach to issues of
pilot fatigue, we also will continue to press for reforms to flight
and duty time rules, some of which go back to the 1930s and do not
reflect current scientific knowledge about rest and fatigue," he
said.
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