I’M GUESSING NO LAWYERS WERE CONSULTED on this experiment:
Jet Blue wanted to squeeze just a few more working hours out of its pilots but it needed the facts to prove that a change in FAA regulations wouldn’t lead to a spate of crashes and flight errors. Its solution? Hook up 50 30 odd pilots to monitoring devices and make them illegally work in excess of FAA protocol in a makeshift clinical trial. Not only does such an experiment violate every ethical law in the book, it also makes hundreds, if not thousands, of passengers unwitting participants in a clinical trial that could possibly end in a fireball on the tarmac.
More here from the Wall Street Journal. (Free link.)