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Shipping company condemns 'one size fits all' cargo pilot fatigue rules
One of the largest shipping companies is criticizing an effort to apply Federal Aviation Administration scheduling rules for avoiding fatigue among commercial airline pilots to pilots flying cargo airplanes.
Reps. Chip Cravaack (R-Minn.) and Tim Bishop (D-N.Y.) said last week that they were filing legislation to addresses a gap in new fatigue rules announced by the FAA last year that were crafted in response to the crash of a regional airline jet in Buffalo, N.Y., in 2009.
The FAA responded to the crash late in 2011 with new rules that require airlines to allow their pilots to get at least 10 hours of off-duty time between flight schedules, which transportation officials have said would give them at least the opportunity to get eight hours of sleep before they get to the cockpit.
But FedEx said Monday in a statement provided to The Hill that applying the same rules to cargo pilots was a bad idea.
“The proposed legislation attempts to implement a 'one size fits all' approach to fatigue mitigation; an approach that the administration’s own analysis determined was not practical," the FedEx statement said. "The FAA recognized that fact when it wisely introduced the Fatigue Risk Management System, allowing carriers and pilots to develop customized plans together to achieve the best possible alertness results."
"As a former cargo pilot, I understand the importance of a single standard of safety for pilots who share the same airspace and runways with passenger aircraft," Cravaack said in a news release announcing the filing of the bill.
"I introduced the Safe Skies Act in order to apply the new, common sense standard for pilot rest to cargo pilots as well," he continued.
But FedEx said it was already "the industry leader in fatigue mitigation because we have worked with our pilots and recognized experts to mitigate fatigue for many years.
"We will continue to incorporate the best scientific findings in the area of fatigue into our scheduling systems,” the company's statement said.
The doomed flight that led to the FAA intervention was Colgan Air Flight 3407, which was operated for Continental Airlines. Critics of the airline industry have suggested that fatigue had been a factor in the crash, and the families of victims of the crash have lobbied Congress ever since to tighten its regulation of the aviation industry.
The measure applying the fatigue rules to cargo pilots, H.R. 4350, would force pilots flying cargo airplanes to abide by the same scheduling rules the FAA has planned to go into effect in 2014 for commercial pilots.
-This post was updated April 24 at 12:29 p.m. to clarify that the FAA investigation revealed pilot error as the primary cause of the Buffalo accident.
