“I’m going to ask for 380 and another shortcut,” says Greg, sitting to my right and pointing to the CJ3’s MFD, which shows an arrival time of 16:19 Zulu. We are about three-quarters of the way down the East Coast en route from White Plains, New York, to Boca Raton, Florida, and we have a numbers problem. Greg thinks a 16:00Z arrival will solve our problem, but I don’t see how we can manage that. He reasons that descending from Flight Level 450 to 380 will improve our groundspeed because our true airspeed (and fuel burn) is greater at the lower altitude.
We descend and beg for a more direct routing. Soon our arrival time is showing 16:10. Our numbers problem is actually a duty hours and flight hours problem. We know we can fly only 10 hours per 24-hour period in the Part 135 environment. There are some exceptions, but this is complicated enough as it is, so I’ll try to keep it simple. We also know we can fly only if we have had 10 hours of consecutive rest in the preceding 24. This means that what we did yesterday affects what we can do today. For instance, if we flew six hours yesterday between 6 a.m. and noon local time, we can do only four more hours today before noon. If we leave at 10 local, we can fly eight hours. If we don’t fly until noon, we can fly a full 10 hours (as long as we meet all the other rest requirements), as our previous 24 hours is “clean” (this is the so-called “look-back” period). This curious requirement makes for some interesting situations.
The whole point is fatigue, and our company policy is clear: “No crew assignments will be made or accepted unless the assignment provides for at least 10 consecutive hours of rest during the 24-hour period preceding the planned completion of any CFR Part 135 flight segment.” Yesterday is catching up with us, and today isn’t helping. When I called for our clearance in White Plains, we were given a route way to the west of what I had filed. We traditionally fly down the East Coast until Wilmington, North Carolina, when we strike out over the Atlantic Ocean on the “AR” routes, which take us over a hundred miles distant from the nearest airport for much for the remaining trip. We’ve got a big raft and some life jackets to prove it. Today we were given a route almost 200 miles longer than expected, and those miles are into the teeth of a nasty headwind — over 120 knots. When I reprogrammed fltplan.com with our new clearance, the time en route jumped from 3:03 to 3:34.
Today’s constellation of events and times, which I may not fully understand, dictate that we must leave Boca and get to Dallas by 20:00 Zulu. Once there, we must wait until 21:15Z before departing for Eagle, Colorado (KEGE). This restriction means we’ll launch for KEGE at a time that gets us there just 17 minutes before sunset. “So,” I ask Captain Greg, “we have to wait for our 24-hour look-back to clear and that means we delay our takeoff into mountainous terrain so that we arrive close to dusk?”
“Yes.”
We subconsciously lean forward, coaxing another knot or two out of the airplane with our body language, as if we are trying to make a foul ball fair by waving at it.
I am not unfamiliar with attempts to control fatigue in another profession. When I started a surgical internship in 1970, there were no restrictions on duty hours. There was an almost cultlike atmosphere, in which any sign of fatigue or illness was regarded with disdain and ridicule. During some rotations we had what was called “every other night” call. To make a weekend available, the rotation looked like this: You came to work on Saturday at 6 a.m. and stayed in the hospital until work was done on Monday evening, usually around 7 p.m. (61 hours). You returned Tuesday morning and went home Wednesday night (36 hours). You returned Thursday morning and went home around 1 p.m. on Saturday, some 55 hours later. Now you had what we called “the weekend off.”
It was generally accepted then that this was a vast improvement from the “resident” system that had prevailed until the 1960s. During the previous epoch, house officers lived in the hospital, never left and were often not allowed to marry, lest conjugal life distract the young doctors, almost all of whom were male in those days. For this reason, house officers in training are still called residents today.
In 1984 a college freshman named Libby Zion was seen and treated in a major New York hospital. Eight hours later she was dead. Her father, a columnist for the New York Times, began a campaign that targeted resident work hours and the supervision of residents, which he felt contributed to his daughter’s death. By 1989 the state of New York incorporated regulation of resident duty hours into its Health Code. The “80-hour work week” (not month) has become standard in medicine today.
The only parties opposing duty hours for surgical residents were the attending physicians (they did it, so why shouldn’t the young do it), the hospitals (residents work more hours and cost less than nurse practitioners or physician assistants) and the residents themselves (they thought they were going to miss more late-night action).
Years later, when I was responsible for a surgical residency program, we instituted a rotation called “night float.” In this system, residents were assigned to work nights only. Despite the outraged cries of many (“they are abandoning their patients at night”), this worked pretty well. Those working at night saw the same patients night after night and got to know them. When nurses called, they got a reasonably well-rested intern on the phone rather than an exhausted resident.
No matter how you slice it in medicine or in aviation, there will be unintended consequences of regulations designed to eliminate fatigue. Greg’s and my delay into Eagle is an example. Have I been tired while flying Part 135? Occasionally, though our company is quick to accept “fatigue” as a legitimate call. I’ve made the call for myself and also on behalf of a captain who was obviously tired. Never have I received a call or email questioning the decision.
Sometimes it is hard to get good rest, even if you meet the duty hour requirements. The hardest part is when you get a call at 4 p.m. saying you’ve got to get to bed soon so that you can get 10 hours of rest before that 2 a.m. wake-up call. I haven’t yet trained my body to fall asleep in the early evening on command. And I have had the added benefit of actually having been an intern in surgery — a job that I had thought taught me how to fall asleep anytime, anywhere.
Now we’re down low, in and out of cloud at 2,000 feet, looking for the Boca Raton airport so that we can call it in sight and get the visual. There is the usual VFR traffic at 1,500 feet perusing the coastline. Finally, I spot it. “Head for it,” says Greg. I rack the airplane over for a path direct to the numbers, call for flaps 15 and turn off the engine sync. At 1,500 feet I lower the gear, watch the airspeed sink below 161 knots and call for flaps 35 and the landing checklist. The precision approach path indicators look good.
We’re on and in by 16:14. Not bad, but we won’t know until the company computer calls our fate. I help the passengers out while Greg calls in with “the numbers.” Once the bags are unloaded and our goodbyes are completed, I straighten up the cabin, take out the garbage and run a vacuum cleaner over the carpet.
“We’re done,” says Greg. “Toast. Going to a hotel room.” This feels not unlike getting turned down for a date to the senior prom — totally deflating. I need mountain time and I know Greg is disappointed too. He has friends in Eagle. It was to be my leg.
“Get some rest,” says Greg. “Tomorrow is Tortola, British Virgin Islands, Wilmington, to clear customs, and White Plains. It will be more than eight hours of flying, and Tortola is a mountain airport. But,” he says with a mischievous smile, “these legs are mine.”
And so it goes with Part 135 flying with a company that is on the move. We usually don’t sit, and we don’t want for entertainment. Plus, we’ll be very well rested, as it is not yet noon and we’re headed to a high-end resort hotel. We’re not due back at the airport until 05:10 local.
For more of Dick Karl’s Gear Up columns, click here.
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