FAA"S Flight Duty Time Regulation 'Directly Imposes' responsibility on Airlines

US FAA on Friday issued its long-awaited Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on pilot flight time, duty and rest requirements, setting the stage for the likely adoption of new regulations that call for flight deck crew at US airlines to get more rest time and spend fewer hours on duty.

The NPRM explicitly states that Part 121 airlines and pilots will have "joint responsibility…for making sure flight crew members are working a reasonable number of hours, getting sufficient sleep and not reporting for flight duty in an unsafe condition…Today's proposal is drafted in a manner that directly imposes the regulatory obligations on both the certificate holders and the flight crew members." FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt said the rule "puts that responsibility with equal weight on the carrier."

Under the proposed rule, pilots would be required to have "9 hours for the opportunity to rest" before reporting for flight duty, and the clock would not start ticking until he or she is "behind closed doors" in a hotel or other designated rest place, Babbitt said at a Washington press conference. Regulations currently require flight crew members to have a minimum of 8 hr. of rest time between flight duty periods. However, the rules do not define rest time, meaning that transit time from an airport to a hotel may count as rest time.

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