Draft pilot rest rules fly into turbulence
Small air operators oppose them
OTTAWA Smaller air operations don’t want a new proposal to combat pilot fatigue drafted by a government-led group to apply to them.
Transport Canada’s aviation regulatory advisory council met Tuesday to review recommendations of a special working group and organizations representing air taxis, small operators, business charters and helicopter companies complained the proposal is unworkable for them.
They run smaller operations and fly many unscheduled fights, often to remote locations, and called for Transport Canada to carve out special rules for them. The proposal should be used as a blueprint for large commercial carriers only, they said.
“It’s one size fits all and flies in the face of the structure of the (Canadian Aviation Regulations),” Fred Jones, president of the Helicopter Association of Canada, told the council.
“It is completely insufficient when it comes to other operations,” added Bill Boucher of the Air Transport Association of Canada, representing smaller air operators.
Groups representing pilots urged the council Tuesday to reject these calls, saying all passengers deserve the same level of safety when they step on to an aircraft.
Canada’s current regulations, drafted in 1965 and last updated in 1996, permit pilots to fly 14 hours in a 24-hour period. Unlike other countries, the rules in Canada do not take into account the latest sleep research and do not distinguish between daytime and overnight flying.
The current regulations also have more lax flight time limitations for small operators than for large commercial carriers.
The working group proposes a cap of 112 hours of flight time in a 28-day cycle, including special limits on overnight flying.
The maximum daily flightduty period should be 13 hours for daytime flying and no more than nine hours for some overnight flights to account for people’s circadian rhythm.
The proposal also includes prescriptive rules to deal with rest periods, cumulative duty hour limitations, split duty, standby, additional rest due to disruptive schedules, augmented long-range flights and cumulative fatigue.
The working group’s proposal and dissenting reports will now be considered by senior officials at Transport Canada as they draft regulations.
Ultimately, Transport Minister Denis Lebel will have to decide if small operators, accounting for about 90 per cent of all air crashes in Canada, should have different rules governing flight and duty times when he proposes draft regulations.
Barry Wisznioswki, chairman of the flight safety division of the Air Canada Pilots Association, told the council this was a bad idea.
“It is essential there is one level of safety in the air transportation system,” he said.
“If a specific recommendation has a big impact on (an air operator), it just means the current regulations are totally inadequate,” added Martin Gauthier, chairman of the Canadian flight and duty times committee of the Air Line Pilots Association International.
“The science is the science is the science. We’re hearing sectors say, ‘We’re special,’ but what you don’t have is special people who can work special hours,” said Phil Benson of Teamsters Canada.
The pilot groups want to see some areas of the proposal tightened up, including aligning with United States, Europe, the United Kingdom and Australia in the area of maximum permitted flight time, so Canada moves down to 100 hours over a 28-day period.
The National Airlines Council Canada, representing Air Canada, WestJet, Air Transat and Jazz Aviation LP, supports updating the flight and duty times regulations to reflect current sleep research, but quibbles with some of the details in the proposal.
For example, the association says under approved criteria, planned extensions without split duty or augmented flight crews may be acceptable. The working group’s report states there is no science supporting the use of extensions without the use of split duty or augments fight crews.