Translated material
Pilots are tired of flying
The minister's order has quarreled the aviators
In the coming days, the conflict between the Russian Ministry of Transport and the country's largest airlines will gain momentum. This conflict has been smoldering latently since November 21, 2005, when the Minister of Transport Igor Levitin, by his order No. 139, approved the “Regulation on the peculiarities of the working hours and rest periods of crew members of civil aviation aircraft of the Russian Federation.” In January of this year, the document was registered with the Ministry of Justice. However, at the insistence of the airlines, its official publication (without which regulations and by-laws do not enter into legal force) is still being postponed. Airlines believe that the sanitary standards provided for by the regulations worsen the situation of air carriers and ultimately affect the economic interests of the flight crew. The Ministry of Transport is unofficially signaling its readiness to listen to the arguments of players in the air transport market. The Russian Flight Personnel Trade Union (PLSR), which is believed to have lobbied for the new regulation in the Ministry of Transport, on the contrary, considers the newly introduced standards to be the maximum permissible. The only concession to the interests of employers that PLSR is ready to make is to establish a transition period during which the working conditions of pilots will be brought to new standards.Today the situation around order No. 139 will be discussed at the PLSR congress with the participation of officials from the Ministry of Transport. Tomorrow, a lively discussion on the same topic is expected in the opposite camp - within the framework of the Air Transport Operators Association, which unites leading Russian airlines.
As Anatoly Yakimchuk, first deputy director of the Aeroflot flight complex, told a Vremya Novostey correspondent, at the moment in Russia there are no legally binding production standards for flight personnel. The last time such standards were approved was in 1993 by the Russian Ministry of Labor (which later disappeared). The Ministry of Labor regulations were issued for a five-year period. In 1998, its effect was extended for another three years, and then some legal uncertainty reigned in the area of regulating the working conditions of Russian pilots.
Maximum permissible output standards for pilots are determined by various specific circumstances, in particular the type of aircraft in question in each case, the characteristics of flight conditions, the nature of aerial work, etc. But the basic formula provided by the 1993 regulation is called “80/800” in industry jargon. Which means, in official language: “The maximum permissible flight time for flights on all types of aircraft cannot exceed 80 hours per month and 800 hours per year.” Since the early 2000s, Russian companies began to switch to the 90/900 formula, which is closer to the practice of their Western European colleagues. In the United States, according to Mr. Yakimchuk, pilots work even more: 100 hours a month, for a total of 1,000 hours a year.
Minister Levitin's order No. 139 declares a return to the sanitary standard of 80/800. According to Mr. Yakimchuk, its use will force Russian airlines to sharply increase the number of working pilots, in particular because on long-distance routes they will now have to use two crews instead of one. “We have calculated that at Aeroflot we will have to increase the flight crew by 108 people (in addition to the current 1,538) and organize five new relay races (destinations where replacement crews are on duty. - Ed. ),” he said yesterday Mr. Yakimchuk "Vremya Novostei".
A representative of another major Russian airline, on condition of anonymity, expressed to Vremya Novostey the following arguments against reducing sanitary standards for pilots. This measure, our interlocutor believes, poses a potential threat to flight safety, since the need to increase the number of flight personnel by 25-30% could lead to a flood of the labor market with unqualified personnel.
Since pilots are paid by the piece, reducing the sanitary standards of flying hours will lead to a proportional reduction in wages. As a result, there is likely to be an outflow of qualified pilots from Russian airlines to foreign ones, which will further aggravate the problem.
A source in the Ministry of Transport, also on condition of anonymity, told Vremya Novostey yesterday that the department is ready to revise some of the standards approved by Order No. 139, taking into account some of the features of Russian aircraft (where the crew consists of three people, and not two, as in the West) and subject to convincing medical research.
The President of the PLSR, Miroslav Boychuk, is resolutely against the revision of Order No. 139. “Indeed, in the West the standards are somewhat higher,” he told Vremya Novostey yesterday. - But our production standards are always taken from Europe, and rehabilitation programs from Africa. At the same time, they forget that in Europe both wages and pensions are higher than ours, and this allows their pilots to recover better.” Mr. Boychuk also said that some members of his union consider the “80/800” standard to be too high. “They are still unhappy with me for losing ground,” the trade union leader complained to the newspaper. He agreed, however, that the transition to reduced crew work rates should be gradual so as not to put airlines in too difficult a situation.