Cargo

            Before the Colgan accident flight requirements for an F.O. were a Multi-Engine Commercial Pilot’s Certificate Instrument Airplane, which requires a minimum of 250 total time hours and 30 hours multi.  Companies were hiring these pilots and typing them in mostly turbo props, but some of them in jets.  After the Colgan Air accident a minimum flight time of 1500 hours total 100 night and 250 cross country came about for the F.O. requirements.  Rest rules have also came about as well that require flight crews to receive certain amounts of hours off for rest for the certain amounts of hours they were working. Rest times start when a pilot checks into their hotel room where as it use to be when the engines shut down.

           

            Cargo carriers follow the older FAR rules of their rest time starting when the engines shut down.  Their rest time is 8 hours from the time they get out of the plane and until the time they start that engines back up. I believe cargo carriers have been excluded from these changes due to them not flying passengers but boxes.  With less lives being at risk there isn’t a huge driven factor to require these new FAR rules to cargo pilots.  The public perception on this is probably un-known considering people outside of aviation only follow major passenger jet flights and I would bet 90% of non aviation folks don’t even know there are new rest rules and hiring minimums.

            I do believe cargo carriers should be included in the new rest regulations.  Flying an airplane being tired and unrested is dangerous none-the-less whether or not there is passengers or boxes on it.  However, I do not think they will be followed if they are implanted into the cargo world.  Working 3 years at an FBO and seeing all the freight dog pilots, they’re stories, etc. I can say that the rest rules they are under right now and duty hour regulations are not being followed with they way they are now.  If you give them even higher restrictions, who’s to say those won’t be followed?  The old rest rules I believed worked fine, I don’t believe it was rest that caused the Colgan accident.  It was two pilots that didn’t know what they were doing.

            If these new rules are inputted into the cargo world of flying this would raise the hiring minimums to young pilots.  They would have to wait until 1500hrs total time to be considered but right now most of them are around 1000 anyway.  I don’t think this would affect my career that much, I’ve seen plenty cargo sides of flying and don’t think I would want to do that type of flying anyway.

LINKS

http://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/rulemaking/recently_published/media/2120-AJ58-FinalRule.pdf