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.

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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.