On November 15, 2010, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) submitted its comment letter to  the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to revise its long-standing regulations governing flight and duty time limits and rest requirements for commercial flight operations. 

The letter states, “The NTSB strongly supports most aspects of the proposed rule while also acknowledging a variety of important issues that remain to be addressed.”   

Since the inception of the NTSB's Most Wanted List of Transportation Safety Improvements in 1990, the Safety Board has included fatigue-related safety recommendations on the list.  The FAA's recent NPRM represented the most significant advancement in flight and duty time regulations in several decades.

In its proposed rule, which is designed to improve pilots’ opportunity for sufficient rest to perform their duties, the FAA acknowledged the need to consider fatigue-inducing factors such as time of day, length of duty day, workload, whether an individual is acclimated to a new time zone, and the likelihood of being able to sleep under different circumstances.  Additionally, the proposed rule would enable flight crewmembers to self-report when they feel too fatigued to continue working an assigned flight duty period, addresses commuting as a fitness for duty issue, and would require fatigue education and training programs for all flight crewmembers, employees involved in operational control and scheduling of flight crewmembers, and personnel having management oversight for these areas. 

However, as the NTSB noted, the NPRM does not address the unique issues affecting the development of fatigue in short-haul operations.  Also, the NTSB urged the FAA to proceed cautiously on extending the flight time from 8 hours to 10 hours and to collect data on this proposed change so that any adverse consequences are identified and mitigated.  Additionally, the NTSB strongly encouraged the FAA to increase the required rest period duration to accommodate an opportunity for 8 hours of sleep for flight crews.       

In preparation for the NTSB’s comments, a small team of specialists from the Office of Aviation Safety, Office of Research and Engineering, and the Safety Recommendations and Quality Assurance Division reviewed the NPRM and associated supporting materials in the rulemaking docket such as draft advisory information on fatigue training, crewmember fitness for duty, rest facilities, and existing guidance on fatigue risk management.  Input from the team’s review was used to prepare the response. 

The FAA is currently reviewing comments to prepare a final rule in this area.  But as the NTSB concluded in its comment letter, “We are hopeful that, with stakeholder support, the legacy of the current inclusive and scientifically based rulemaking effort will be far more positive and sustained, as the traveling public, crewmembers, and air carriers must not continue to endure the significant human loss of life and financial costs resulting from continued accidents involving fatigue.”