Air cargo carriers participate in FAA rulemaking governing pilot rest and duty

Client(s) UPS Airlines, Southern Air

Jones Day separately represented air cargo operators United Parcel Service (UPS) and Southern Air in rulemaking proceedings before the FAA in which it overhauled the rules governing commercial airline pilot scheduling. Proposed rules from the agency would have created a "one size fits all" series of regulations imposing billions of dollars in additional operating costs on cargo airlines. Together with UPS, Southern Air, and experts, two teams of Jones Day lawyers marshaled legal, technical, and economic arguments to persuasively demonstrate to the agency that overnight cargo airline operations differ vastly from those of network passenger airline operations. In its final rule issued on December 22, 2011, the FAA determined that, because applying the new regulations to all cargo airlines would result in costs that significantly exceeded the quantified societal benefits, the new rules would be limited to passenger airlines.