Should Cargo Carriers Be Exempt From Flight/Duty Changes?

The Federal Aviation Administration announced a couple of new regulations for co-pilots after the fatal Colgan Air crash in 2009. Pilot fatigue, training and qualifications were all factors in that crash. One of the new regulations, which don't apply to cargo pilots, require that pilots get at least 10 hours of rest between shifts. Eight of those hours must involve uninterrupted sleep. In the past, pilots could spend those eight hours getting to and from the hotel, showering and eating. Pilots will be limited to flying eight or nine hours, depending on their start times. They must also have 30 consecutive hours of rest each week, a 25% increase over previous requirements. Another new regulation requires co-pilots, to get 1500 hours of flight time as pilots for their certification to fly passenger and cargo planes. Previously, co-pilots were required to have 250 hours of flight time. Another regulation in place, new standards for flight simulators evaluation and qualification. Making them experience a more accurate and realistic scenario involving stalls, upset recognition and recovery techniques, maneuvers in icing conditions, takeoffs and landings in gusting crosswinds, and bounced landing recovery. Cargo pilots fly under older rules that do not require as much rest, permit longer times on duty, sometimes 16-hour work days and allow them to fly beyond eight hours in certain conditions. Those rules do not impose any special limits on flight time at night, that's when cargo carriers do much of their flying. 

While the FAA rule did not apply to air cargo pilots, the FAA encouraged air carriers to voluntarily comply as well and improve the rest facilities for pilots while cargo is being loaded and unloaded. Every pilot is sharing the same air space and operating complex equipment; safety becomes a major concern. But air cargo pilots tend to run shorter flights than passenger pilots do, which means that regulations should not be the same for both fields. Cost of implementing the FAA regulations to the air cargo industry is also another major factor. This is probably why the FAA didn't enforce the rule in the first place. 

Personally, I do not think that passenger carriers and cargo carriers should be put into the same category, just as the air cargo carriers' states that the FAA regulations should not be "one-size-fits-all." There are more lives at stake than there is in transporting cargo.

From a pilots' perspective, it would take them much longer in reaching the minimum hours required and from the  managements' perspective it could lead to a financial loss due to a much slower process in transporting products. 

Federal Aviation Administration. (December 21, 2011). FAA Issues Final Rule on Pilot Fatigue. Retrieved from 
https://www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/news_story.cfm?newsId=13272.

Federal Aviation Administration. (November 5, 2013). FAA Issues Final Rule on Pilot Training. Retrieved from https://www.faa.gov/news/press_releases/news_story.cfm?newsId=15314.