Flight Attendant Tips For Anxiety
A pilot dishes the dirt. Is there such a thing as love at first flight? A First Office for a regional airline in the US has dished the dirt on his mile-high lifestyle for the website FlightClub.
So, flight attendants will be encouraged to drink by their alcoholic pilot coworkers, but if they are tested and caught, the airline will make every effort to rehabilitate the pilots, while firing the flight attendant, not because she is actually endangering anyone’s safety, just because she is expendable.
The Federal Aviation Administration FAA has mandated changes to pilot duty time and rest regulations, in place since the mid s, that must be implemented at all U. Flight Attendant duty time and rest regulations were established in the mid s. These pilot Federal Aviation Regulations FARs signal a significant paradigm shift away from existing pilot duty and rest requirements, which vary for domestic, international and unscheduled flights, for different types of passenger flights, and do not take factors such as start time and time zone crossings into account.
In , the FAA began considering changes to the regulations to enhance safety but its efforts were stymied by airline lobbyists who cited a lack of safety data. Then, in February , the crash of Colgan Air Flight , which killed all 49 people on board and one on the ground, was attributed in part to pilot fatigue and training. The families of the Colgan victims advocated relentlessly and concerns among U.
This, in addition to pressure from Congress and from international aviation regulators who sought science-based flight, duty and rest standards, prompted the FAA administrator to address pilot fatigue in June An FAA working group comprised of fatigue experts, airline representatives and pilot union leaders published a proposed pilot rule in September , and a final rule was published on December 21, with a two-year implementation period.
The new pilot FARs incorporate the latest fatigue science to set different requirements for pilot flight time, duty period and rest based on: The regulation also allows an airline to develop an alternative approach for mitigating pilot fatigue, as long as it is based on scientific data that is validated and continuously monitored by the FAA. This means that pilots could negotiate with management to develop alternate duty and rest schemes that are based on data and subject to FAA approval.
AFA came up with a timely solution and was able to write in contractual provisions specific to Flight Attendants. AFA is examining how these changes will affect our Flight Attendant provisions in each of our contracts and, going forward, we will strive to include aspects of the proposed regulations that best address our needs and expand upon them. We will make the most of any additional changes in the future that may be implemented at the regulatory level.
