Pilot alleges American cutting corners with crew

DALLAS, Texas (Reuters) -- An American Airlines pilot and union safety expert asked federal regulators Monday to order a relief pilot be put on flights between Dallas and Hawaii, charging American was cutting corners by flying with just two pilots.

Capt. Rich Rubin also asked for protection under a federal whistle-blower act for reporting what he called a company "experiment" with safety by reducing the flight crew from three to two pilots as of June 15.

American Airlines, the world's largest airline and a unit of Fort Worth, Texas-based AMR Corp , rejected the criticism.

American switched last month from flying with three pilots to two on the daily Boeing 767 run from Dallas-Fort Worth to Honolulu and Maui, saying seasonal winds made it a shorter flight than eight hours, the federal limit for flying without a relief pilot.

"This is a normal seasonal adjustment and fully within what other carriers are doing," American spokeswoman Karen Watson said, adding the summer flight plan would last for about 2-1/2 months.

Watson said American planes routinely flew with a reserve officer in challenging conditions, such as night flights over South America's mountains, even if they were shorter than eight hours.

Assumptions challenged

Rubin, in a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration released to reporters, alleged the summer flight plan from DFW to Hawaii was based on unrealistic assumptions and that the flights had lasted more than eight hours, more than half the time since the change.

Rubin is a member of the safety committee of the Allied Pilots Association, the union representing American Airlines pilots. He has been active in pilot fatigue issues, including lobbying for an FAA ruling last year requiring airlines to enforce rest breaks for pilots regardless of flight delays. Airlines criticized the decision as unrealistic.

Rubin said American's summer flight plan to Hawaii assumed crews would fly faster at lower altitudes than normal, cutting the scheduled flight time from eight hours and 18 minutes to seven hours and 55 minutes.

But Rubin said crews routinely had to fly higher to avoid turbulence, costing time, and that the flights exceeded eight hours 53 percent of time from June 15 through June 30, which he said showed the assumed flight time was questionable.

"The proper and safe approach to the possible elimination of relief pilots on these flights should have required AA to retain them until such time that historical data proved that the flights could be operated in less than eight hours on a regular basis," Rubin wrote to the FAA.

"As such, AA conducted what can only be deemed an experiment while skirting regulatory compliance (with aviation rules)," Rubin said.

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