On the mind of Fred Smith

   Fred Smith, chairman and chief executive officer of FedEx Corp., in an April 10 speech pushed back against those saying that new flight-and-duty time rules for passenger airline pilots should apply to cargo airlines too. Calls for the change have become louder after investigators looking into a UPS Cargo plane crash in Alabama last year learned the pilots were extremely fatigued, although fatigue hasn’t been determined yet as the cause of the crash.
   The Federal Aviation Administration recently stiffened hours-of-service rules for passenger airline pilots, but the rules were not in effect yet at the time of the UPS accident, and they don’t apply to pilots of all-cargo planes because the agency determined the costs outweighed the societal benefit. Cargo airlines can adopt the new standard if they choose.