CAREER PILOT Landing your dream job CAREER PILOT is designed to help you get your flying career off to the best start (www.aopa.org/careerpilot). TOO TIRED TO CARE? Fatigue and pilot rest » by Pete Bedell MUCH HAS BEEN discussed recently about PUT THREE OF THESE FOUR-LEG, 13-HOUR DUTY DAYS TOGETHER AND THE BODY GETS RUN DOWN. rest issues involving professional pilots. Following the crash of a Colgan Air Dash 8 Q400 in Buffalo in February 2009, the issue has prompted the industry to analyze and revamp the rest and duty-time requirements for pilots. Rules are being rewritten to take into consideration the very-early-morning and back-of-the-clock flying that flies in the face of the human body’s natural circadian rhythm. Under the current Part 121 rules, pilots can be scheduled to fly up to eight flight hours in a 24-hour period. String three of those days together and you have a short, yet productive week of flying. Eight hours on the job may sound like an average day to a desk jockey; however, they are in fact very busy flying days. Flight time (also known as block time or pay time, since that’s when the pay clock runs) is only counted from the moment you push off the gate until you block in at the destination. Duty time at my airline—the time when pilots must be at the airport and ready to go—starts one hour prior to pushback and ends 15 minutes after the last block-in. Factor in a drive or commute to base and you can see how an airline pilot may be in for a very long day. The type of trip can also have a factor in perceived fatigue. If I fly seven or eight flight hours in one day, it could be broken up into one long leg, or two legs of three hours or more each—not too difficult. Or it could be four flights of fewer than two hours each. Those four-leg days often have a 13-hour duty day associated with OCTOBER 2011 FLIGHT TRAINING / 45http://www.aopa.org/careerpilot