The recent debacle when American Airlines flight 331 crashed in Jamaica on Dec. 22, 2009 and other airline tragedies have ignited a firestorm of controversy about pilot fatigue and the safety of airline flight.
The issues of fatigue, low pay and training have resulted in decreased public confidence in pilots. As the wife of a regional airline pilot, this has hit close to home.
My husband, Andrew, has been a first officer with two regional airlines during his five-year career. A typical civilian pilot, he attended a large university to obtain his Bachelor’s degree and then a flight school to obtain his necessary certificates and ratings. Andrew has never failed a check ride or exam. However, it is normal for many pilots to fail one or more checks in an aviation career. This does not make them incompetent pilots, as you will see in this essay; fatigue is the number one issue that endangers flight safety.
Andrew’s first job flying an Embraer Brazilia 120 turbo prop airplane paid him less than $12,000 a year with no vacation or sick benefits. At his current job for over three years, this is the first year in which he will earn over $30,000 annually. Pilot pay is not really a significant issue, since most of the pilots we know would fly for free, but it is a piece of the puzzle you should understand.
Pilots are paid “gate-to-gate,” which means that they only make money when the plane has pushed away from the gate in the departure city and the time clock stops when they pull up at the arrival gate. Yet their work involves far more than flying the plane. Pilots must file flight plans, conduct pre- and post-flight checks to ensure the safety of the airplane and fill out paperwork, among other duties for which they do not get paid.
Federal Aviation Regulations specify that airline pilots do not work more than eight hours a day; however, the eight hours only counts as “gate-to-gate” time. Andrew’s schedule often ends up involving 16 hours of actual time at work as eight hours of flight time usually means double that amount of time doing actual work-related duties.
Additionally, pilots do not end their work day at home. They are usually not in their home city, which requires a hotel stay. With only eight hours left in their typical day, they now have to rest for the next day. Hotels are usually not attached to airports, so part of these eight hours is spent in a shuttle bus going back and forth to their hotel.
Andrew often calls me while waiting for the hotel shuttles to show up, which takes 15 to 30 minutes on average each way. If you are keeping count, we are now down to seven hours left in the 24-hour day.
Who doesn’t want to go to work the next day without a shower and some breakfast, especially when being alert is important and you are stuck in a closed cockpit with a co-worker? Add another one to two hours in the morning for showering and breakfast and you are left with five to six hours of sleep maximum for that 24-hour period. And this is only another piece of the puzzle.
Airlines change their bases (or home airports) frequently. Andrew has had three different home bases in five years. If we sold our house and moved every time his base got switched, I wouldn’t be able to hold down a job. Who would hire an employee for only a year?
As you’ve already been shown, most pilot spouses must work in order to be able to afford the basic necessities of life (namely, a place to live and some food) since newer pilot’s jobs pay poverty-level wages.
Because they can’t feasibly move each time their base is changed, most pilots commute to work. Commuting means more fatigue, as pilots fly out the night before they start work and then have to sleep in the crew room, where every flight attendant and pilot hangs out before and after a trip.
Crew rooms are noisy places, usually without beds, and hardly offer a restful nights sleep on which to begin an average four-day trip. As I write, Andrew is getting ready to take an overnight flight to his base because his first flight is at 5 a.m., and there are no other flights from Denver which will get him there in time.
At his rate of pay, how can we afford a hotel room each night he has to commute to work? If the crew room is silent and there is a couch available (which is highly unlikely), he will get three hours of rest tonight. He has never had an incident while on duty and is an exceptional pilot. But even exceptional people can face extraordinary challenges in the sky.
Despite recent events, airlines refuse to change scheduling requirements as it would chip away even more at their profits. Until the FAA addresses the recommendations from the NTSB to increase the rest requirements, we can hope that fate and good training will keep my husband and his passengers safe.
Jennifer Brown Friend is a consultant pharmacist in Denver. Her husband is a pilot with a regional airline. EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
