Edition: U.S. / Global

Pilots on Nonstruck Lines Are Asked to Slow Flights

Published: March 7, 1989

With Eastern Airlines virtually shut down by a machinists' strike, pilots of other airlines have been asked to fly by the rule book beginning today, a move that could slow flights and further disrupt the nation's air transportation system.

The pilots who agree to the plan, announced Friday, could chose to follow steps like using procedures for bad-weather approaches to airports even in good weather and insisting on reading their flight plans back to air traffic controllers before leaving a gate, in both cases procedures that are normally left to the pilots' discretion.

While insisting that the action is intended to promote safety rather than to cause delays, Capt. Henry A. Duffy, president of the 41,000-member pilots' union, acknowledged that following the book would add time to normal flight procedures.

Officials at the union, the Air Line Pilots Association, said they believed it would be difficult for airlines to stop such actions in the courts or by other legal means because of the broad choices given airline captains over what safety procedures they follow in the cockpit. Counting on Hostility

The officials suggested that if many pilots participated, President Bush could be forced to declare an emergency and set up a fact-finding board and postpone the strike by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers at Eastern for 60 days. Eastern's pilots have been honoring the machinists' picket lines.

Mr. Bush refused Friday to intervene this way but warned that he could not allow the strike to disrupt the nation's entire transportation system.

The pilots aim to tap the widespread hostility that the union believes exists among its members toward Frank Lorenzo, the chairman of the Texas Air Corporation, which owns Eastern.

Many pilots at other major carriers represented by the pilots' union have expressed bitterness over Mr. Lorenzo's tactics when he placed Continental Airlines into protection from creditors under Chapter 11 of the Federal bankruptcy laws and abrogated labor contracts when he failed to win concessions from that airline's unions.

Leaders of the pilots' union say they believe that their members at other major carriers like United Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Northwest Airlines and Trans World Airlines would be sympathetic to joining in actions aimed at putting pressure on Mr. Lorenzo.

Members of Eastern's pilot's union organized a teleconference Tuesday night for about 20,000 pilots, flight attendants and their families in 11 cities to discuss the strike. No Visual Approaches

By strictly following the rule book, pilots could tie up the limited communication channels to air traffic control towers as well as the time of tower controllers.

Also, Captain Duffy said, the air traffic controllers would be forced to keep planes on the ground in order to maintain proper distances between incoming flights and to assure a safe flow of traffic.

Ron Cole, a spokesman for the pilots union at Eastern said an analogy would be ''as if a foggy instrument conditions existed at every airport in the country.''

A domino effect could result, Mr. Cole said. Pilots would be making landings by following procedures for bad weather conditions, which take more time. This in turn would end up keeping more planes from taking off. At the same time pilots could tie up towers with the flight plan readings, further congesting the system. Procedures Rarely Used

Mr. Cole said that while pilots have the discretion to use bad weather procedures as a safety measure even in good weather and have the flight plans read in normal operations, such procedures are rarely used.

Most pilots fly similar flight plans daily and thus once it is read over the radio by a controller, a pilot usually simply confirms with the tower that a plan is being used, rather than reading the entire plan back to confirm details.

Also, if weather permits, pilots are often allowed to use more streamlined procedures to approach a runway that depend upon their seeing the airport and other airplanes. Under these visual flight rules airplanes can fly closer together than under rules used for bad weather that call for distances between planes to be monitored by flight instruments and radar.

Under visual flight rules, pilots are able to make manuevers to bring the plane in faster, and need not adhere strictly to the three-mile separation required between aircraft flying in bad weather. Uncertaintity on Proposal

In Atlanta, several pilots of Delta Air Lines refused to say whether they would answer the call to follow the rule book.

''I have no idea what will happen,'' one of the pilots, Capt. J. R. Hovey, said today as he was preparing to board a flight departing Hartsfield International Airport. Capt. Hovey said he had not yet decided whether to follow the call to follow the rule book.

If the pilots follow the rule book they could severly disrupt the travel of hundreds of thousands of flyers and cause anger against the union.

Mr. Duffy said, however, that this was a risk the union was willing to take. ''If the price of maintaining safety is inconvenience,'' he said, ''it is a price worth paying.''