Animals in transit, train and truck drivers, office workers and airline executives - what do all these have in common? The answer is that they are all subject to stricter European working time limits than airline pilots. Why? I am not sure that there is a sensible answer. But all that airline pilots are asking for with the current European rules is that they are assessed scientifically to ensure that they only require us to be able to perform as humans (not super humans) and that they are uniformly implemented across Europe. We are not demanding to be treated better than the other groups mentioned, or even as well as them.

As you are able to read in this special edition of Cockpit News, that request is being systematically ignored. Despite 18 months of notice prior to the required implementation of new minimum EU FTL rules, many EU Member States seem to have been totally unprepared for them. Not only does this deny the EU flying public the very basic safety protections intended by the legislator, it places professional pilots in a very difficult legal position: do they apply the new regulation, which places a responsibility squarely on their shoulders, or should they continue to operate to the now potentially obsolete and less safe National Rules? If there is an incident in the 'twilight zone' between the new EU Regulation and the old, often more permissive National Rule, who is to blame? Who is responsible?

I am occasionally asked why it is that professional pilots are so interested in having clear, scientifically proven limits on what they can work. Why can't they be like 'everyone else' and work until the job is done? Well - we were exempted from being like 'everyone else' and so do not have a legal, health and safety based maximum working week of 48 hours - for pilots can 'safely' work 60 hours a week, for up to three weeks. 60 hours through any of the 24 in each day, too. As an everyday example, we fly westbound across the Atlantic on a Monday, rest in a time zone 5-8 hours different to home and then fly back through Tuesday night, without sleep and into a busy European airport, to land an aircraft carrying up to 400 passengers and crew; ready to deal with whatever emergency fate throws at us. We train for, and readily accept such responsibility as part of our job - all we are asking is that we are robustly protected by the regulator and through the law from having to deliver these levels of responsibility when impaired by fatigue.

ECA has always, and will always seek to ensure that the latest research and understanding of human performance is used to protect both our members and the flying public from the threat of fatigue on the flight deck.