By 18 February 2016, all European Commercial Air Transport Operators must comply with the new EASA Flight Time Limitations (FTL) rules, which will replace EU-OPS Subpart Q. This article sums up the main changes that we stressed during the briefing we organised on 7 December.

Under this new rule structure, the role of staff representative will become even more important. First of all, given that the limits are solely based on safety requirements, without taking into account the crewmembers’ social needs, it will be essential to sign agreements at company level for a balanced and safe working environment.

Secondly, the legislation represents a change of paradigm, from a compliance system to a performance one. This is translated into more self-regulation by airlines. However, this is a process that should be closely monitored by staff representatives to avoid commercial imperatives dictating safety procedures.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that the new Occurrence Reporting regulation made it compulsory to report fatigue. You are thus not only encouraged to report, but you have a legal obligation to do so.

Some new concepts are introduced:

1) Acclimatization is a state in which a crewmember’s circadian biological clock is synchronized to the time zone where the crewmember is.
Reference Time is the local time at the place where the crewmember was last acclimatized.

EASA’s thinking here is that if you jump more than 2 time zones, you will have to look up if you are acclimatized to the local time of departure, to the local time where you start your next duty or if you are in an unknown state of acclimatization. Once the acclimatized state is clear, you can than enter the relevant FDP table to find your maximum allowable FDP.

2) Delayed reporting: The operator may delay the reporting time in the event of unforeseen circumstances. A notification time is established, allowing a crewmember to remain in his/her suitable accommodation when the procedure is activated.
When notified of the delay, you will be given a new reporting time. In order to avoid some potential issues with a rolling delay, should it be necessary to further adjust the initial delayed reporting time, the FDP starts counting 1 hour after the second notification or at the original report time if that is earlier.

3) Reserve: An operator can place a restriction on a pilot to be contactable in order for the operator to assign a duty which will start not less than ten hours later.

Reserve cannot be included in a rest period and counts as a duty day. Unused reserve days cannot be counted retrospectively as days off.

You can technically be on reserve for a 24-hour period as long as the operator identifies an 8-hour sleep opportunity. The Operator will define the maximum number of consecutive reserve days.

We are concerned that this might lead to roster instability; the use of reserve should therefore be monitored in each company.

Standby provisions are changed and clarified:

• Standby and duty at the airport shall appear in the roster. The start and end times shall be defined and notified in advance to the crew, to provide them with the opportunity to plan adequate rest.
• Standby shall always be followed by a rest period.
• A crewmember should not be assigned an FDP starting after the end of a standby period.
• The home standby daily duty limit has been raised from 12 to 16 hours, despite strong opposition from ECA.
• When assigned a duty during a home standby, the rest period will now only be calculated from the time an individual reports for their FDP.
• Any FDP must start ticking after 6 hours on home standby / 4 hours on airport standby.
• The airport standby combined with an FDP is limited to 16 hours.

Flight Duty Period:

Existing limits remain and some additional limits are added:

• 110 duty hours in any 14 consecutive days
• 1000 hours of flight time in any 12 consecutive calendar months.
• Maximum Daily FDP are slightly changed, some are more restrictive, some are less.
• Pre-planned Operator extensions will be allowed up to a maximum of one hour, twice per week.

These extensions do not apply to unforeseen circumstances.

Extension of FDP due to in-flight rest

Similarly to current legislation, the new EASA FTL rules allow for an FDP to be extended through in-flight rest. The key elements to the new rule are that:

• The FDP is limited to 3 sectors.
• The minimum in-flight rest period is a consecutive 90-minute period for each crew member and 2 consecutive hours for the flight crew members at control during landing.
• The minimum rest at destination is at least as long as the preceding duty, or 14 hours, whichever is greater (this rest may not be reduced).

All time spent in the rest facility will now count as FDP and a crewmember will not be able to start a positioning sector as part of this operating crew on the same flight.

Rest facilities are now well defined in 3 classes and are subject to different provisions.

Overnight FDP

• The new FTL rules allow for a 2-sector, 11-hour maximum FDP to be conducted overnight.
• Only 4 sectors per duty are allowed for consecutive night duties.

EASA has identified key areas that they wish to continuously review. This is one of those areas. EASA will therefore make a report on these rules in February 2019.

Rest periods

The operator now has the possibility to reduce the rest at the home base to 10 hours if they provide suitable accommodation. This applies only if the crewmember does not rest at his/her residence and it should be planned in advance.

Beware this is not a tool to reduce the rest in case of unforeseen circumstances.

Minimum rest away from the base can be reduced in a similar way and could now be as low as 10 hours, or as long as the preceding duty (if greater).

This rest could further be reduced under approved FRM. At this stage, no Belgium-based Operator has an approved FRM under EASA FTL requirements.

Recurrent extended recovery rest period

The regulation increases and improves the rules for the so-called “weekly rest”, now called “recurrent extended recovery rest period” (RERR). 36 hours and 2 local nights have to be planned after a maximum period of 168 hours from the previous RERR period.

Special provisions for: Disruptive schedules – Late finishes/Early starts

EASA’s FTL legislation does not define restrictions on the maximum of consecutive late finishes and early starts within the block of work. However, some provisions are made:

• If a transition from a late finish/night duty to an early start is planned at home base, the rest period between the 2 FDPs includes 1 local night.
• If a crewmember performs 4 or more night duties, early starts or late finishes between 2 ERRP, the second ERRP is extended to 60 hours.

The Belgian CAA decided that all Belgium-based operators are “late type”.

Special rest provisions for: Time zone differences

A minimum of local nights will now be provided to compensate for time zone differences, when a rotation involves a 4-hour time difference or more.

Discretion

The EASA rules maintain the concept of Commander’s Discretion, whereby an extension to a Flight Duty Period (FDP) or a reduction/increase to a rest period is permitted under certain conditions and circumstances, occurring at or after the reporting time.

• If you are operating under the basic FTL table for acclimatized crew, the commander can choose to extend an FDP up to a maximum of two hours.
• If you are operating under the extended FDP table, the maximum amount of Commander’s discretion that can be used is one hour.
• The commander may also decide to reduce (or increase) a rest period following an FDP but never below ten hours. 


Of course, only the commander can make the decision to extend an FDP on the day but EASA considers this is a shared responsibility between pilots, management and cabin crew.

The commander shall submit a report to the operator when an FDP is increased or a rest period is reduced at his/her own discretion. When the increase of an FDP or reduction of a rest period exceeds one hour, a copy of the report will be sent by the operator to the competent authority.

The exercise of commander’s discretion should be considered exceptional and should be avoided at home base and/or company hubs where standby or reserve crewmembers should be available.

Split duty

EASA now specifies that the break excludes the time for post and pre-flight duties and travelling. This time has to be defined in the operations manual.
A difference is made between suitable accommodation (a separate room for each crew member) if the break is 6 hours or more or encroaching the WOCL, and accommodation (a quiet and comfortable place not open to the public with a reclinable seat with leg and foot rest with access to food and drinks) for all other cases.

If the break is more than 6 hours or if the break encroaches the WOCL, this extra time does not count for the extension of the FDP.

Split duty cannot be combined with in-flight rest.

In only three pages, we cannot explain to you each and every change in the law. We are therefore preparing some further material that will guide you through the new text. As part of it, our FTL expert, Didier Moraine, has developed a new FTL Calculator for our European structure, ECA. The application is available on Android and iOS devices. Don’t forget to download it, to ensure you always fly within legal limits. You will receive more documents in the coming weeks, so check our specific webpage and read our emails.