Cargo Flight/Duty Regulations

The FAA changed many of the Part 121 and ATP requirements following the Colgan Air Buffalo accident, many which in my opinion were over kill and hardly addressed the real problem. Prior to the Colgan accident an FO at an airline was only required to hold a Commercial Pilot Certificate and a minimum of 250 hours, those minimum requirements have since changed and require all FO's to hold an ATP certificate and a minimum of 1500 hours (Depending on if a the pilot graduated from an approved school or is a military pilot (really hope Eastern gets this exemption)). The FAA and congress responded to the families of the lives lost in this accident and the general public by presenting these new regulations with hope that they would address the problem but if you were to take a further look you would see that that is not the case.  Both the Captain and FO on this flight were more than qualified to fly the aircraft and had accumulated over 2000 hours each. The new regulation that requires FO's to have 1500 hours seems to me to be counter productive and just deter future aviations from wanting to become airline pilots (Collins, R)

Cargo carriers are subject to less restrictive flight and duty limits such as, no more than; 1200 hours a year, 120 hours a month, 34 hours in any 7 days, 8 hours during any consecutive 24 hour period, and 8 hours between required rest periods. Basically what i've taken from the regulations is that the regulations limit the cargo carriers from scheduling a pilot in a single pilot operation for more than 8 hours a day but if it is a two man operation or more then the pilot can fly more than 8 hours provided it is not within a required rest period. A minimum amount of rest must also be observed between the duty times to abide by the regulations (ECFR).

The cargo carriers have undoubtedly been excluded from the 121 fatigue regs due to the lack of outsider perception into the operation that cargo operators receive since they fly boxes rather than people. With regard to a part 121 carrier, the fuselage holds paying passengers who come into contact with the crew routinely the same is not the case in a part 135 carrier. Even though some part 135 operations involve unscheduled transportation of passengers the negative perception of tired pilots is not as forthcoming as with part 121 carriers. 

In my own personal opinion I think it only makes sense for part 135 carriers to abide by the same duty and rest requirements that part 121 carriers do. The Colgan air crash was a direct result of fatigued pilots who made bad decisions most likely due to their fatigue. Regardless if there are passengers who can witness these unsafe acts or not, a fatigued pilot still can cause a lot of damage and loss of life if they suffer from the same fatigue and drive an aircraft into the ground. Although we dont hear about these cargo carrier accidents they do happen occasionally. The perception is of no importance with these accidents, regardless of whether a box or passenger is in the back of the plane a tired pilot is a tired pilot and can cause a lot of harm.

If the FAA were to mandate the part 121 rest and duty requirements onto the part 135 cargo carriers it would be a safer sky but potentially bad for business. The implementation of these rules would reduce the amount of legs or flights these pilots fly which would require a greater number of pilots which then would require a larger portion of the companies income to pay for the increase in pilots. The increase in the amount of required pilots would be good for the industry because it would promote more people into becoming pilots but at the same time it would be worse for the employed pilots because with a reduction in the companies income comes a reduction in the pilots wages. 

Collins, R. (2014, March 28). A double tragedy: Colgan Air Flight 3407 - Air Facts Journal. Retrieved October 17, 2015, from http://airfactsjournal.com/2014/03/double-tragedy-colgan-air-flight-3407/

ECFR — Code of Federal Regulations. (n.d.). Retrieved October 17, 2015, from http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=1c888f32227c060f4083b50b8bc020af&mc=true&node=pt14.3.135&rgn=div5#sp14.3.135.f