![]() Spokeswoman Brandy King said the numbers show an effective system. Southwest Airlines acknowledged a climb in fatigue reports filed last month – 35 reports for every 10,000 duty periods, compared to 10 reports for the same metric in March 2019. The limits for major US airlines include 30 hours of flying time each week and at a minimum 9 hours of rest between shifts.īut pilots report the stresses of the job and changes because of storms can leave them worn out before hitting those benchmarks. “April is already setting fatigue records,” SWAPA wrote.įederal rules set baseline limits on hours pilots may work and require rest periods. The union wrote in the letter to executives that the number of pilots who reported being unable to work because of fatigue skyrocketed last fall, including a 600% spike in October, and hit “another staggering 330% increase” last month. “It is inefficient scheduling processes that are affecting when we work in a very dynamic environment.” ![]() “A lot of our delays and issues that we’re having have to do more with scheduling and connecting pilots with airplanes,” Murray told CNN in an interview. More hiring alone will not solve the fatigue issues, SWAPA president Casey Murray says. Forty percent of those will be flight crews. Southwest executives identified staffing as one of their key priorities this year, setting a goal of hiring 8,000 new employees. Mandatory retirement numbers are expected to grow over the next 6 years. Thousands of pilots retired – either by choice or aging out at 65 – during the pandemic, and research presented by the Regional Airline Association says 2,000 pilots reach mandatory retirement age this year. Passenger numbers are about 90% of 2019 levels this month, according to Transportation Security Administration data, but major US passenger airlines are about 3,000 employees short from that time period, according to Bureau of Transportation Statistics data. The causes, the pilots say, include cancellation chaos caused by severe weather, and climbing demand for air travel testing the mettle of still-recovering airlines. “Fatigue, both acute and cumulative, has become Southwest Airlines’ number-one safety threat,” the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, or SWAPA, told airline executives in a letter this week. They cannot in Austin see where Southwest is on the ground," Homendy said.Pilots at Southwest Airlines and Delta Air Lines say pilot exhaustion is on the rise, and they’re pressing the airlines treat fatigue and the mistakes that result as a safety risk. "Air traffic control in this situation can see the FedEx plane on radar. But it is being used at only 35 airports and was not deployed at the Austin airport, she said. That system, Homendy said, played a role in preventing a runway collision last month between taxiing and departing aircraft at New York's John F. The NTSB in 2017 recommended widespread adoption of technology - known as Airport Surface Detection Equipment, or ASDE - designed to notify controllers and prevent this type of collision. Controllers also confirmed to the FedEx crew that it could land on 18 Left when the FedEx plane was 2.19 nautical miles out. "It was very close, and we believe less than 100 feet," Homendy said.Ĭontrollers had cleared the Southwest departure from runway 18 Left when the FedEx jet was about 3.2 nautical miles away, she said. "They saved, in my view, 128 people from a potential catastrophe." "I'm very proud of the FedEx flight crew and that pilot," Homendy said. The FedEx plane, meanwhile, climbed as its crew aborted their landing to help avoid a collision, the Federal Aviation Administration has said. The FedEx pilot told the Southwest crew to abort taking off, she said. A Southwest passenger jet and a FedEx cargo plane came as close as 100 feet from colliding Saturday at the main airport in Texas' capital.ĪUSTIN, Texas - A Southwest passenger jet and a FedEx cargo plane came as close as 100 feet from colliding Saturday at the main airport in Texas' capital, and it was a pilot - not air traffic controllers - who averted disaster, a top federal investigator says.Ĭontrollers at Austin's international airport had cleared the arriving FedEx Boeing 767 and a departing Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 jet to use the same runway, and the FedEx crew "realized that they were overflying the Southwest plane," Jennifer Homendy, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, told CNN Monday.
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