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Will The Pilot Fatigue Problem Be Solved
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During hearings this week, Pinnacle Airlines President Philip Trenary responded to questions about fatigue. According to CNN Trenary told the committee "If a pilot is fatigued for any reason, all they have to do is say so and they are excused from duty. The night of (Flight) 3407, we did have 11 reserve pilots available."
That comment is outrageously misleading. Of course a pilot could cancel a flight due to fatigue. But the ramification for doing so are severe. The pilot who cancels a flight due to fatigue can expect to never have a fatigue problem at that airline again again - or at any other airline.
Ask any airline pilot. When mentioning this "f-word" to airline management, pilots are typically told that following through with a request to be taken off a flight due to fatigue will mean being taken off all flying. It will further mean being scheduled for a physical examination to determine whether or not the pilot should be returned to duty - ever.
Airlines take the position that all they are required to do is to not violate the fifty-year-old FAA duty time rules. If a pilot has trouble with fatigue when operating within FAA limits which allow a pilot to work up to sixteen hours a day, the pilot has a physical problem and should not be working for an airline.
Randy Babbitt, the new head of the FAA says the duty rules in use today were set up before the jet era and that they fail to account for the stresses pilots are under. When jets came into use by the airlines, the fatigue problem was dealt with in negotiation between airline management and the pilots' unions. Rules were established at each airline which provided protection greater than that called for by the federal rules.
Two things changed that. One was deregulation of the airlines in the 1980s. New airlines, which had no unions, entered the market. These airlines pushed their pilots to the limits of the federal rules. This put pressure on legacy airlines to renegotiate the fatigue-fighting limits with the unions.
The second thing, Reagan, the former head of a union - the Screen Actors Guild - shocked the striking air traffic controllers by firing them and hiring replacements. This signaled a major change in US labor relations. Going on strike was no longer a useful tool for unions.
With the power of unions undercut by Reagan, and low cost airlines flying by outdated rules, the fatigue problem became severe. For a while, pilots at the legacy airlines used sick leave when too fatigued to safely fly. The airlines fought back by reducing sick leave. The fatigue problem escalated. Though fatigue was clearly a factor in several accidents, they were chalked up to "pilot error".
For years, nothing has been done. The Buffalo crash, tragically, has served as a wake-up call. Randy Babbitt has promised change. How much change will depend upon how much the public wants it.
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