From: Spectrum News

WASHINGTON — Capt. Robert Travis is head of the Louisville-based Independent Pilots Association, which represents nearly 3,500 UPS pilots.

In an interview with Spectrum News Thursday, Travis said there is a two-tiered level of safety, based on whether pilots fly passengers or packages.

Lawmakers have introduced a bill to ensure commercial pilots follow the same rules for flight time and rest.

According to cosponsors of the new bipartisan “Fatigued Pilot Protection Act,” in 2014, the Federal Aviation Administration put in place new safety rules, FAR Part 117, on flight and rest time for passenger pilots, but cargo pilots were ultimately excluded from the updated standards.

“Every night in our skies, every day in our skies across the U.S., whether it’s New York or Chicago or Washington, Dallas-Fort Worth, we’ll have a UPS aircraft or a cargo aircraft that’s a 757 flying on a parallel approach next to a passenger carrier, and yet our fatigue can potentially be much higher than that passenger carrier simply because we’re carved out of the Part 117 duty and rest rules that help mitigate fatigue,” said Travis.

In 2013, UPS Flight 1354 originating from Louisville crashed in Birmingham, killing the crew.

A report from the National Transportation Safety Board listed several contributing factors, including the crew’s fatigue.

However, an NTSB member said in a statement, “even though the FAA’s new pilot fatigue rules promulgated earlier this year do not apply to cargo pilots; these would not have influenced the outcome of Flight 1354 even if they had been followed.”

Travis, who is meeting with leaders in Washington this week, said the union supports the new legislation and will keep fighting to get cargo pilots carved back into the rule.

“It’s not a matter of if, it’s when there’s going to be a tragedy related to fatigue that otherwise and hopefully could be avoided by having cargo pilots be part of the Part 117 rule,” he said.

A spokesperson for the Cargo Airline Association told Spectrum News in a statement:

“We strongly support existing FAA regulations governing cargo pilot flight and duty time and oppose efforts to shift to passenger carrier-centric requirements. Cargo and passenger operations are different, and cargo carriers operate under a separate but no less safe set of rules that reflect these operational distinctions.”