A B767 captain reported the flight attendant crew on the inbound aircraft turned around on his outbo...

Narrative:

Our outbound flight was delayed for five hours due to inbound\mechanical delay from its originating station. The flight attendants do a turn so inbound flight attendants are the outbound flight attendants. I figured that since the flight was so late they had re-crewed the flight. They had not; during the flight I found out from the flight attendants that the crew desk had asked the flight attendants to waive. The flight attendants had been on duty since midmorning; so they had already been on duty without rest at our departure time of almost 13 hours. With a scheduled arrival after midnight this means they would have been on duty over 17 and 1/2 hours! I don't know the far's for flight attendants but they insisted this was legal and it was obvious they were scared of the crew desk. Their fatigue factor was very high; and they were obviously struggling to stay awake. My concern as a captain is if an emergency developed during the flight that my cabin crew would not be able to perform due to fatigue. At times when I would talk with the cabin crew during the flight they were almost incoherent and struggling to understand what I was telling them; they were so tired. This is a definite safety factor.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A B767 Captain reported the flight attendant crew on the inbound aircraft turned around on his outbound flight but because of a previous maintenance delay would be on duty for 17.5 hours at the destination and were so fatigued they were unsafe.

Narrative: Our outbound flight was delayed for five hours due to inbound\mechanical delay from its originating station. The flight attendants do a turn so inbound flight attendants are the outbound flight attendants. I figured that since the flight was so late they had re-crewed the flight. They had not; during the flight I found out from the flight attendants that the crew desk had asked the flight attendants to waive. The flight attendants had been on duty since midmorning; so they had already been on duty without rest at our departure time of almost 13 hours. With a scheduled arrival after midnight this means they would have been on duty over 17 and 1/2 hours! I don't know the FAR's for flight attendants but they insisted this was legal and it was obvious they were scared of the crew desk. Their fatigue factor was very high; and they were obviously struggling to stay awake. My concern as a Captain is if an emergency developed during the flight that my cabin crew would not be able to perform due to fatigue. At times when I would talk with the cabin crew during the flight they were almost incoherent and struggling to understand what I was telling them; they were so tired. This is a definite safety factor.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.

Attributes
ACN	980270
Time
Date	201111
Local Time Of Day	1801-2400
Place
Locale Reference	ZZZ.Airport
State Reference	US
Environment
Light	Daylight
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	B767-300 and 300 ER
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 121
Flight Phase	Cruise
Flight Plan	IFR
Person 1
Function	Pilot Flying Captain
Qualification	Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Experience	Flight Crew Last 90 Days 130 Flight Crew Total 20500 Flight Crew Type 4500
Events
Anomaly	Deviation - Procedural Published Material / Policy Flight Deck / Cabin / Aircraft Event Other / Unknown

A B767 captain reported the flight attendant crew on the inbound aircraft turned around on his outbound flight but because of a previous maintenance delay would be on duty for 17.5 hours at the destination and were so fatigued they were unsafe.