FC5357

The report was passed to our FRM Team by our Safety Team. It was noted that the reporter operates the A330, some of which do not have dedicated crew-rest facilities. These aircraft are due to be phased out in the coming years, but they do have the option to curtain off 1 to 5 business-class seats that create a class 2 rest facility for crew if needed. These seats will be used if these aircraft are used on longer trips that require IFR (In Flight Rest) to extend FDPs.

Currently the difference between rostering 2 or 3 pilots is the requirement of rest based on FDP under an approved Flight Time Limitations (FTL). However, as a result of FRM work, we also monitor double-WOCL trips with 2 pilots and one night down-route, and either restrict these to one per roster period or add a third pilot dependant on layover length. That said, Flight Crew Management have an industrial agreement soon to be implemented (timescales to be confirmed) that gives greater protections than the current CAA regulations. It is also worth noting that these agreements were underpinned by work achieved by the FRM department. The relevant IR rule states that:

All flights will be assigned two operational pilots unless:

• • An extension of an FDP is required as per OMA 7.1.6.1 and then in accordance with OMA 7.1.6.4.1. In this case an additional crewmember will be rostered on the flight.
  • If the outbound or inbound sector BTRT is 9.5 hours or greater an ACM will be assigned on both the outbound and inbound flight.

In the case where an A330 is used, and until the fleet rollover of the A330-300 to the A330-900 is completed, the following variation on the above rule applies:

Instead, any 2-pilot flights on the A330, or an intermix pairing of the A330 and the A350 (SFF), where the outbound sector of 9.5 hours BTRT or greater, will be rostered two local nights free of duty at destination if the flight arrives at the destination after 00:00 UK time.

In reference to the CRR statistics, FRM do monitor this and are able to pull data supplied to us by the Pilots on the Flight reports. It can also be noted that there is potential to add further fields to the flight report that will allow FRM to ask questions more specific to fatigue. This is yet to be agreed but ideas are Karolinska Sleep Scale (KSS) score at TOD, CRR and CRR length. These questions are asked in our FCAFs but as the reporter says, the old forms have become troublesome to complete. This is not necessarily due to the design but more to do with a recent update issue that will be hopefully resolved soon. We appreciate that filling in extra forms after a long flight is not ideal, hence why we are looking at incorporating some FRM questions into the flight report and only asking for extra, confidential, voluntary information if the reporter scores themselves highly on the KSS. We have already achieved something similar with our Cabin Crew and we are receiving reporting rates close to 70%. If agreed, we hope to implement this by the middle of 2025 however, with the data we receive from the flight reports, we see that 36% of our pilots report taking CRR on all flights and, when isolating the A333 these numbers increase to 37%.

We hope to implement this by the end of the year [2024] but, until then, we can only draw on the FCAFs we have received. If we take a closer look at the data, we currently have a reporting rate of 9% (YTD to Oct) for our Flight Crew and from that snapshot we see that 56% of our pilots report taking CRR on all flights. Of that 56%, only 6% suggested they took longer than an hour by selecting the “other” field under time taken in CRR. There is no field for multiple occurrences, but this is something we have addressed in the new FCAF form mentioned above. When isolating the A333 these numbers are very similar at 56% and 7% but this of course relies on the user inputting the details correctly. With that in mind, and according to the data our pilot’s supply, we can see that just over half our pilots take CRR and approximately 4% potentially take more that 1hrs CRR.

As to what we have in our Ops Manuals regarding CRR, we have several references and, to summarise, our procedures suggest this is not a last resort option and it does not state that multiple uses of CRR cannot be utilised.