The concern related to a foreign carrier’s procedure for recording flight crew’s flight and duty times.
The reporter expressed a safety concern regarding the continuing abuse of flight and duty limitations within the airline. Although not an Australian operator, the reporter believes this information has relevance, as they operate many flights a day within Australian flight information regions (FIRs). Therefore the authorities with an interest in safety need to be made aware of the situation.
The timings the Airline requires in regard to sign on and departure.
The airline mandates a pick up time from the hotel before departure as approximately between 2 hours and 2 hours 20 minutes depending on the city location. For every departure from our home base this is always approximately 2 hours. The crew arrives at an airport approximately 1 hour 50 minutes before departure.
The problem arises now as the airline only counts the sign on time as being 1 hour before departure when the whole crew is actually at the airport approximately 1 hour and 50 min before the flight. It is impossible to arrive at an airport 1 hour before push-back, obtain briefing material, brief the crew, perform pre-flight duties and board hundreds of passengers on a wide-body aircraft with any degree of safety.
Therefore, for every departure, everywhere in the world including Australia, the crew is always required to actually work longer than the hours claimed by the airline. This obviously becomes quite relevant if the duty is approaching maximum hours or an extension is required because of delays or weather etc.
The airline also mandates that the sign-off time for the flight duty limit is as soon as the aircraft is on chocks after a flight. It always takes approximately half an hour to perform shutdown checks and disembark the passengers so there is another 30 minutes the airline claim the crew are no longer working. In fact, the whole crew is still responsible for the safety of passengers and the aircraft for an extra 30 minutes more than is claimed.
With all this taken into account, the airline has their crews working approximately 1 hr 20 min more than is claimed for every flight everywhere in the world.
The reporter advised that a departure timeline sheet was promptly withdrawn when it became evident that it showed exactly the situation as described.
It showed a standard departure time every day of 0725. It had a requirement to be at the flight briefing at 0550. It also shows a requirement to be in a crew bus leaving the terminal for the aircraft after the crew briefing, 15 minutes before officially signing on.
The reporter comment:
I realise that a foreign regulator governs the airline’s operations and not CASA of Australia but I wish to bring this to the attention of a responsible authority within the Australian FIRs as the airline operates here daily.
We operate our flight and duty times in full compliance with our Flight Time Limitations Scheme, as approved by our Regulator.
CASA has reviewed the REPCON and is satisfied with the operator’s response. It should be noted, CASA believes that the flight duty times the operator operates under are consistent with the relevant ICAO standards.
With regards to REPCON report AR201500063; the case was reviewed in depth by our functional area with the concerned operator. They are satisfied with the operator’s fatigue risk management system in conjunction with the facilities and services provided for crew easement and comfort. We will continue to provide diligent oversight as per our mandate to ensure our operators continue to operate with highest level of safety standards.
The reporter provided the following comments in relation to this report:
Both the airline and the regulator being one and the same in this country, provided their standard response being that it is legal. I of course always imagined that was always going to be the case.
I don't think I, or anyone else, have ever made a statement to the effect that they were not operating within the proscribed rules of the regulator. My claim still is that we are being made to operate more hours than are being accounted for. That is still the case and has not been addressed by any party involved. CASA has taken the politically easy option of stating it meets ICAO standards and not addressing the fact that we always operate more duty time than is actually logged. The whole point that we are always at work long before our actual sign-on time seems to have been ignored. This is possibly not a concern for many other operators, as they are only required at work one hour before to enable an on time departure. This is not the case in this airline and I would assume some other long-haul operators.
To highlight my points in a practical way, only a few days ago I was unable to leave the aircraft after arrival for just on 50 minutes. Of course, as I have shown in earlier correspondence, I actually was signed-off as soon as the aircraft was at the gate.
As I have already stated the situation will arise where a crew that have had to extend their duty time due to unforeseen circumstance and immense operational pressure from the company actually being at work for more than the maximum allowable duty. This is a real possibility at the moment as the airline are finding it difficult to recruit suitable staff and flight crew are often already at the maximum duty limit before sign on.
This leaves a flight crew open to all sorts of legal and moral repercussions depending on interpretation of the rules should an incident/accident occur.
These comments were sent to both CASA and the regulator concerned.