Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome both Mr. Brennan's presentation and its brevity. It is welcome because members wish to deal with a number of questions. If I may, I will deal with both aspects of the presentation separately. I have had an opportunity to discuss the flight time issues in respect of the EASA rules with a number of pilots and my questions will be asked from that context. I will focus on five areas in particular. First, there is the issue of the short call stand-by. Pilots have indicated to me that a crew member wakes up at 4.30 a.m., starts a stand-by duty at home at 5.30 a.m. until, perhaps, 11.30 p.m. The pilots are concerned about the length of time and state this will be 22 hours from the start of the stand-by and 23 hours after having woken up. They believe that period is too long and has the potential to have an impact on their capacity to act safely.

The second issue pertains to night duties. I understand three independent scientific reports were commissioned by EASA in 2011 which concluded that flying at night should be limited to a flight duty of ten hours. I understand that anything above that would create critical levels of fatigue and potential safety risks. The witnesses might give their views on this issue. The solution being put forward from the pilots' perspective is to limit night flights to approximately ten hours as a basic rule. They also suggest that specific scientific research on night operations longer than ten hours be commenced to allow for a potential review of these rules in future, but until then, their attitude is it is not adequate.

I refer to long work days and multiple take-offs.

There is a view that the greater number of take-offs done in a day impacts significantly on fatigue levels. I am not a pilot but I understand it can be intense work.

Another issue brought to my attention is the notion of the pilot’s home base. Some airlines redesignate the home base of the pilot almost every week to reduce costs. There is a view that the designation of a home base should be permanent.

There is general acceptance from pilots of the 1,000 hour rule as a move in the right direction. There is, however, a view that it could be strengthened by defining the calendar year as commencing on 1 January rather than 1 April which allows 1,800 hours flying within a year and a half rather than two years.

There is a meeting about these proposals on Friday at which the Irish Aviation Authority, IAA, will have an opportunity to flag its acceptance or otherwise. The pilots would like to think from a safety perspective that the IAA would not agree to them as drafted and notify the Department of its concerns.