Pilots who fly your holiday packages want the same rest rules as the pilots who fly you to grandma’s

As the peak holiday season ramps up for online retailers and shipping companies, cargo pilots that fly packages for Amazon, UPS and FedEx are pushing to work under the same rules as passenger pilots, a change that the industry says could pose safety hazards by abrupt schedule changes. But some lawmakers think otherwise and are backing a single standard. After lobbying from the package-delivery industry, cargo pilots were excluded from new rest requirements for pilots that took effect in 2014. Those rules required a minimum of 10 hours of rest for passenger pilots in between flights. Rest requirements for cargo pilots remained at eight hours. Three House lawmakers — Reps. John Katko, R-N.Y., Salud Carbajal, D-Calif. and Matt Cartwright, D-Pa.— last week introduced the Safe Skies Act that would bring cargo pilots under the same rules as passenger pilots. A similar bill was reintroduced in the Senate earlier this year. Several unions, including those representing pilots at UPS and FedEx, are urging lawmakers to make the change. Some say a change is overdue. Robert Sumwalt, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said the taxing job of flying long hours and crossing of multiple time zones pose concerns about cargo-pilot fatigue.<br/>