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OK, a better headline might start out "Indian Pilots Are Dying of Tiredness" for one. For those not familiar, crew rest requirements for US professional pilots
by psunavy03 2y ago
OK, a better headline might start out "Indian Pilots Are Dying of Tiredness" for one. For those not familiar, crew rest requirements for US professional pilots are spelled out in Title 14 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Section 121:
- At least 9 consecutive hours of rest during the 24-hour period that precedes a flight assignment of less than 8 hours.
- At least 10 consecutive hours of rest during the 24-hour period that precedes a flight assignment of 8-9 hours.
- At least 11 consecutive hours of rest during the 24-hour period that precedes a flight assignment of 9 or more hours.
- At least 24 consecutive hours of rest in any 7 calendar days.
These can be reduced to 8 hours of rest if additional rest is scheduled on the back end.
No pilot may fly more than 1,000 hours a calendar year, 100 hours a calendar month, or 30 hours every 7 days.
I'm not familiar with the rules in the EU or elsewhere in the world.
- dyauspitr 2y agoWhen you put it that way it seems like a pretty easy job.
- cptcobalt 2y agoI think this counts as flight time, not paperwork & preparation time on the ground.
- yunohn 2y agoYeah that’s my understanding as well for all flight crew - the regulations only define non in-air time. Getting to a hotel to sleep takes a lot of time even after wheels touch ground - gotta taxi, follow SOPs, pass through security/immigration, travel to the hotel, and then actually fall asleep. Also, repeat in reverse to get back to work.
- bluGill 2y agoThe problem is it is almost always a boring tedious job. Most of the exceptions are when they are in the simulator doing training. (they train for worst case things like complete engine failure in weather so bad they wouldn't even take off with good engines - but since there is a possibly this could happen they train for it). However you still want them well rested and paying perfect attention even though the job is easy because every once in a while they hit one of the harder cases in the real world.
- ysofunny 2y agothere's nothing easy about keeping yourself alert for multiple hours while doing nothing at all our brains and bodies are lazy and efficient, do nothing long enough and the instinctive "screensaver timeout" kicks in, and you get bored, then loose alert attention. preventing this from happening for multiple hours is tiring and a skill which means it gets easier to do the more you do it
- hnfong 2y agoIt seems pilots are actually going to be great at meditation. Or maybe the other way round! Master meditators could be great at piloting as well..
- psunavy03 2y agoAs a former military aviator, I will say that there might be something here. A skill that's praised in that community is "compartmentalization," or being able to put away distractions such as the argument you had with your spouse, the kid being sick, or the late paperwork sitting on your desk that's irritating your boss, and focus solely on flying the mission while you're in the cockpit. That said, at least in my time, they did a crap job of actually teaching students HOW to compartmentalize. That said, one of the steps in being qualified to fly any given aircraft is having to occasionally get in the simulator and fly a "Kobiyashi Maru" type sequence of multiple compounding emergencies over and over again. You're being graded not just on being able to follow the checklists, but knowing enough about the aircraft to know what to do when multiple systems fail and the checklists contradict each other, or you're in a corner case where following a checklist blindly is a dumb idea. In cases like these, being able to be calmly present in the moment is a very valuable skill.
- psunavy03 2y agoPilots aren't there to fly the plane when everything is going well. They're there to be the qualified professionals who bring everyone home when everything is going wrong.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]