Union asks LaHood to press UPS on fatigue rule

    The union that represents pilots who work for UPS asked Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to press their employer to voluntarily adopt a new FAA rule on pilot fatigue when he meets with UPS executives today.
    Robert W. Travis, president of the union, said in a letter to LaHood that “UPS has indicated, at least to me, their intent to refuse to voluntarily ‘opt-in’ to the new rule.”
    He said in a recent letter UPS told his union that “we believe that cargo and passenger carriers require different regulatory approaches to duty and rest.”
    Travis asked LaHood to use “the full powers of persuasion of your office” to get the parcel company to adopt the rule.
    In December the Federal Aviation Administration excluded cargo operations from a final flight and duty time rule it issued.
    The IPA, which also represents Federal Express pilots, filed a petition for review in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to challenge the FAA, saying the agency made a “capricious decision to discard its August 2010 proposal that uniformly applied science-based flight and duty time rules to both passenger and cargo carriers” and that it was “based on a cursory assertion that compliance costs for cargo operations significantly exceed the related societal benefits.”