I had an experience in the summer of 2014 that many travelers would categorize as a nightmare.
My parents and I were flying home from my cousin's wedding in Cancún, Mexico, and there were thunderstorms up and down the East Coast. We were scheduled to arrive at JFK Airport in New York that evening, but instead, our JetBlue flight got diverted to Baltimore.
While we were waiting for clearer skies to proceed to New York, the flight crew ran out of duty time and we had to deplane. Because JetBlue didn't serve Baltimore (and still doesn't), they had no other crews on hand to get us the rest of the way by air. The airline wound up chartering buses to drive us about three hours overnight from Maryland to New York.
It was frustrating, to say the least, but it happens! Air travel isn't always seamless, and, although a little worse for wear, my parents and I eventually made it home and got some travel credit for the inconvenience.
More than 10 years later, I still get antsy when I think about the crew duty clock. I'd rather take a flight than a bus any day (or night) and don't want to get stuck going through that kind of ordeal again. As summer approaches with its thunderstorms, here's what experts say travelers need to know about flight crew duty limits:
As with almost every quirk in aviation, the pilot and flight attendant duty clock is there to keep the skies safer.
Under duty time rules, pilots and flight attendants are limited to how much they can work in a single shift and how much rest their company is required to give them between shifts.
According to the Air Line Pilots Association, crew duty limits are based on regulations that are meant to ensure that pilots and flight attendants are as alert and safe as possible while performing their safety-critical duty.
Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants, said it's important for passengers to remember that Federal Aviation Administration regulations and airline work rules are there to promote safety.
"If you hear that a flight crew is timing out, it may be frustrating, but it means they really should not be working that flight," she said.
There's no single answer to this question.
The FAA sets baseline rules for the maximum work hours a pilot or flight attendant can be on duty, and the minimum rest they must get between shifts. However, airlines and their unions are free to negotiate more stringent requirements into their contracts, something that Nelson's organization said has become an increasingly important safety net.
"The federal regulations are absolutely outside of the duty and rest protections that we know that we consistently need to remain safe," she said.
Ahmed Abdelghany, associate dean for research at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University's David B. O'Maley College of Business, told me that various factors including a flight crew's initial reporting time at the start of their shift, the number of legs they fly and what time of day the flights occur at, can all effect the duty clock.
"It's not just one formula fits all," he said.
In general, FAA rules prohibit any single pilot in a two-pilot crew, which is the minimum on scheduled commercial flights, from flying for more than 10 hours in a single 14-hour duty period. Those regulations also lay out the minimum rest requirements between flights for pilots.
Flight attendants have slightly more relaxed regulations, but their duty periods are also capped at 14 hours and are generally required to have at least 10 hours of rest between 14-hour duty periods.
There's not a lot that passengers can do if their crew times out, but Nelson said the airlines have worked hard in the last few years to make it a rare occurrence.
"In our view, for the most part, those things got generally worked out in the last several years, so it should be very rare," she said. "When flights are otherwise generally going, it's not an entire shutdown of the airport, there shouldn't be more than a handful of canceled flights for crews timing out."
But for passengers, it's important to remember that the crew duty clock is there to keep you safe, and not to take it out on the crew if something goes wrong.
"Fundamentally, just like you don't want the plane to leave if it had a mechanical problem, you don't want the people who operate all the safety provisions onboard to not be able to operate them," Nelson said.
According to pilots association, pilots also often try to work behind the scenes with their company, air traffic controllers and others that can help optimize their route on the ground and in the air to save time and beat the clock whenever possible.
Yes. Two major factors can play a big role in crew duty issues: location and time of day.
According to the experts, later flights are more likely to have crews that time out, especially when bad weather or some other disruption has led to delays throughout the day.
Also, airlines have more employees and other flights available at their hubs to swap crews or tweak your itinerary in the event of a disruption, so if your flight is leaving from an airport that only sees a limited service, it could be harder for the carrier to adjust if the duty clock runs out.
"If your flight, the first flight, is canceled, the beginning of the day, they have a better chance to reroute you on other flights or other itineraries to get you to your destination," Abdelghany said. "If you are flying on an irregular operations day, and you are flying out of a spoke later in the day, good luck."
Zach Wichter is a travel reporter and writes the Cruising Altitude column for USA TODAY. He is based in New York and you can reach him at zwichter@usatoday.com.