Quote:
Originally Posted by Doug Taylor  Trust me, you don't want your family in the back of an A-320 after the crew's been on duty for 13 hours and on their 10th hour of flight time during a storm on arrival into JFK. |
Why does the fact that they have flown 10 hours and not 8 hours make it unsafe? I might agree that the fact that they've been on duty for 13 hours makes it unsafe, but that's being done all the time so it can't be that unsafe.
A 2 leg day with 10 hours of flight - even with the big scary thunderstorms at JFK - doesn't seem that much to ask. Unless you're actually flying a plane from the late 1930s, cruise in todays modern flight deck is not exactly high workload. If this is leg 6 of 7 then I agree extra flight time over 8 hours might be a problem because the crew will have spent a lot of time in a high workload situation.
How you write a regulation that allows what has been proven to be safe (and I don't say 10 hours of flight has proven to be safe, but I don't say 8 has either) and prevents what would be dangerous is beyond me. But to knee-jerk reaction and say 10 hours under any circumstances is unsafe is not, I think, correct.
And just to round the whole thing out - I HAVE flown 9:50 between required rest and I DID make the final approach into Atlanta with thunderstorms in the area. I have no idea what I flew in 24 hours that day, but my recall is the overnight wasn't that long, so probably more.
Kudos to Jet Blue for actually STUDYING the issue and not just saying "lazy damn pilots, make them fly 10 hours".