Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee, I am Captain Duane Woerth, President of the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) which represents 55,000 professional pilots who fly for 51 airlines in the United States and Canada. ALPA appreciates this opportunity to discuss pilot fatigue because we feel it is a significant flight safety issue.

Pilot fatigue is equally as important to flight safety as metal fatigue, wiring insulation fatigue, and other aircraft component fatigue. The FAA has a statutory responsibility to prescribe minimum standards to prevent all fatigue that impacts safety. While the agency is being responsive to mechanical fatigue, it’s been moving at a snail’s pace to address the issues surrounding pilot fatigue.

There is no question that pilot fatigue is present in our commercial airline operations. ALPA receives daily reports of scheduling that causes pilots to be virtual "zombies" at the end of the day. To illustrate, I would like to share one schedule that is "legal" under the current rules and has been assigned to pilots. The pilot reports to work at 7:10 AM and is released from duty at 9:15 PM for a 14-hour/5-minute scheduled duty period. During that time the pilot made 12 landings flying to and from a major hub airport. While the scheduled duty time was 14+ hours, in the reality of today’s flight environment, this duty period is often extended to 16 hours due to weather or ATC delays.

Once the pilot is released, he must travel to the hotel and take care of his personal requirements before going to bed. This particular schedule was repeated for four days so the pilot had to awaken, dress, and travel to the airport on each of those days for a 7:10 AM report time. As a practical matter, this pilot’s sleep opportunity was six hours, from approximately 11:00 PM to 5:00 AM. To fly this schedule once is fatiguing and the pilot has to be extremely tired on his last leg of the day. To repeat this schedule four days in succession results in cumulative fatigue which increases on each of the following three days. Under such conditions, science and common sense has told us that pilots are more prone to making mistakes that could result in a serious incident or accident.

Pilots are continuously subjected to onerous scheduling, such as I just described, because the FAA regulations on flight and duty time are simply not based upon current scientific principles and are not adequate to prevent fatigue. The supplemental and international flight time rules have not been substantively addressed for nearly 50 years. These rules were implemented when the DC-3 airplane was state-of-the-art. It carried 28 passengers 1,000 miles at a speed of 170 miles per hour. Today, we have the Boeing 747-400 airplane, which carries over 400 passengers 7,000 miles at 600+ miles per hour. Times and equipment have changed but the rules have not. They are not designed to cope with the modern environment and equipment.

While the domestic rules were amended in 1985, the FAA has acknowledged that these revisions did not completely resolve the problem of fatigue. The FAA said at that time that NASA was conducting a study of factors that affect pilot fatigue. The FAA promised to review that study and use it to determine what changes to the flight time limitation regulations should be made. That study has long been completed, and even though it establishes that the current rule is inadequate, the FAA has taken no action.

Action on this issue is urgently needed and needed now. The NTSB has found that fatigue and long duty days were a causal factor in some 20 accidents and incidents. Unless the rules are revised soon, we can expect fatigue to contribute to more accidents and incidents. As a result of the NTSB’s investigation of these fatigue-related accidents, changing the hours-of-service regulations is on its list of most wanted safety improvements and has been a high priority of the Safety Board for many years. As Chairman Hall recently said and I quote, "The Department of Transportation is still permitting pilots … and others to operate under regulations that are out-of-date and contribute to fatigue. This lack of leadership to change the regulations continues to put all users of the nation’s transportation system at risk." ALPA wholeheartedly agrees with Chairman Hall.

ALPA has been actively engaged in the rulemaking process and has encouraged the FAA to apply recent scientific findings to the flight and duty regulations. The FAA’s most current effort to revise these rules is contained in NPRM 95-18, published on December 18, 1995. ALPA, along with other interested parties, submitted comments in June 1996 and expected prompt action. We are still awaiting the FAA’s action.

The FAA just recently announced that after a seven-year moratorium it will finally enforce its rule requiring that domestic pilots assigned to reserve duty receive a minimum rest. ALPA applauds the FAA for this action, but it needs to do more. The agency must finalize its current rulemaking, which has been pending for three-and-a-half years. ALPA believes that the flight and duty time regulations must be revised to consider modern science and to provide minimum hours of service that will ensure that pilots are not pushed to fly beyond demonstrated levels of safety.

Some of the key protections that must be included in the revised rule include the following:

1. The current rule limiting actual flying to eight hours per duty period must not be changed. This eight-hour limitation has over the years proven to be effective in preventing pilot fatigue.

2. The eight-hour reduced rest period must be eliminated. The current rule allows the rest period to be reduced to eight hours. At best this allows for a six-hour sleep opportunity, considering that the eight hours is counted from the time a pilot is released from duty until he or she reports back. ALPA concurs with the NASA study which found that a minimum rest must be 10 hours.

3. A duty limit needs to be established for pilots. Currently, a pilot cannot be scheduled for more than 16 hours of duty within 24 hours because of the rest requirement. However, in practice, that duty can be extended beyond 16 hours for weather, ATC delays, etc. There is no duty limit in the regulation, and it is sorely needed. ALPA proposes a 12-hour duty limit, which can be extended to a maximum of 14 hours for circumstances beyond the control of the carrier. The 12 hours is again based upon the NASA study which found there is a "significantly increased vulnerability for performance – impairing fatigue after 12 hours." Indeed, 12 hours is 50 percent more than the accepted eight-hour work day. ALPA would reduce this duty period to 10 hours for backside-of-the- clock operations.

4. Tag-on ferry flights must be eliminated. Currently, a flight crew can fly a revenue trip to Europe and then be required to fly the aircraft back to the United States under Part 91, a non-revenue flight. Anyone who has flown to Europe knows first hand that they would not be in any condition to operate an aircraft again. Yet, this crew who would be on duty for 24 hours or more is expected to do so. This is completely unacceptable and must be fixed immediately.

5. Night flying and circadian rhythm disruption must be considered in establishing rest periods. Everyone knows, from their own experience, that performance declines during the normal nighttime sleep period when operating on the back-side-of-the-clock. Conversely, everyone recognizes that it is more difficult to sleep during the day, during a normally active period. Research has repeatedly confirmed these universal experiences, and the authors of the NASA study concluded that "circadian disruption can lead to acute sleep deficits, cumulative sleep loss, decreases in performance and alertness, and various health problems." Not surprisingly, they recommend that flight and duty limitations take "circadian stability" into account. NASA has determined that nighttime flying imposes different physiological challenges as compared to daytime flying. These differences must be accommodated in the timing and duration of rest periods, and would also require limiting the number of consecutive nights of flying.

For reasons the FAA entirely fails to explain, the NPRM does not consider circadian stability at all, except in one small area reflecting long-term changes in time zones. In ALPA’s view, the failure to consider the added strains of night flying and circadian stability is a glaring flaw. There is no dispute that 10 hours on duty between 10:00 PM and 8:00 AM will be significantly more stressful and fatiguing than the same duty performed between 8:00 AM and 6:00 PM. And no dispute exists that sleep between 10:00 PM and 6:00 AM will be significantly more satisfying than sleep between 8:00 AM and 6:00 PM. The FAA’s NPRM is woefully deficient in this area because it completely ignores this critical issue. The FAA needs to reconsider this issue in its final rulemaking process.

In ALPA’s comments to the NPRM, we addressed not only the issues I have mentioned here but others as well. This document has been made available to the Subcommittee staff.

Pilot fatigue is a major safety concern for the traveling public. ALPA highly urges this Subcommittee to encourage the FAA to finalize their rulemaking on this critical issue promptly.