New EU regulations on pilot flight hours ‘a danger to public safety’

Published on Wednesday 22 February 2012 12:21

EU proposals on pilot fatigue, which would see pilots asked to fly aircraft more than 20 hours after being awake, have been criticised as ‘a danger to public safety’ by pilots’ union Balpa.

The proposals could legally allow pilots to land their aircraft 22 hours after they had woken for the day, Balpa said. The organisation said it was worried that the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) appeared to be supporting the plans. Balpa was highlighting its concerns today at a House of Commons Transport Committee hearing into flight time limitations. Airlines and the CAA were also among those giving evidence to MPs. Before the meeting Balpa general secretary Jim McAuslan said: “Twenty

hours of wakefulness is far from the only part of the proposals which give us serious concern. “Compared to the UK’s domestic rules, the EU proposals would see pilots being able to fly further - as far as California - with no back-up crew and, contrary to scientific advice, allow pilots to do up to seven early starts in a row, which is desperately fatiguing.” He went on: “We have met with the CAA to try to get them to realise the dangers of what is being proposed here, but they seem intent on supporting this European scheme. “We need the Government to say it won’t support this danger to public safety, and will demand that we either get the proposals to a much safer position, or retain our own domestic rules. “The Government have to answer this question: ‘Is it safe to land an aircraft after 22 hours?’. If not, they need to reject these EU proposals now and keep the current UK rules in place until they have been significantly improved.” Aviation minister Theresa Villiers told the committee there would be “significant safety gains for UK passengers” from the European proposals. She said UK passengers travelling on some European airlines were currently flying with carriers not subject to the existing pilot flight times under which UK airlines operate. Ms Villiers said the European plans would “broadly” bring the whole of the continent up to UK standards and would not see a “levelling down” of standards. She went on: “It’s never going to be possible to get complete scientific consensus (on fatigue).”

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Hector the Lessor

Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 08:32 AM

#2 Velv. It seems OK to me. One or two pilots over here have got into hard trouble by falling asleep at the wheel, so if you have increased hours it would seem natural that at least six hours they could spend fast asleep. Not the co-pilot mind you, it is only a small worry. On international flights when we are all asleep I would like to feel someone was up there working out where we were going.

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Velv

Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 07:36 AM

It could be argued that all planes now make such heavy use of autopilot that there doesn't need to be a pilot there at all. The pilot is only required to taxi from the terminal to the runway and back. The plane handles takeoff, routing and landing. Except when something goes wrong, which is when ŷou want an alert pilot!

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Debrastorr

Wednesday, February 22, 2012 at 01:56 PM

I wouldn't get into a car if I knew the driver hadn't slept for 22 hours ... But in the context of the usual EU mis-information re straight bananas, I do find some humour in this.

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