Looking at several pilots forums, the common thread is fatigue management and what management do(or don't) to reduce it. Seems the big fatigue enhancer is the rosters not having sufficient "good rest" time between them. While most airlines "encourage" pilots to nominate if they are too tired to operate the flight, but the ramifications for these pilots convinces them to call in sick for a few days. This is more so when pilots like JB are operating both directions of the equator.. YMML-OMDB-EGLL Then EGLL-OMDB-YMML. And then just to balance the time clock...YMML-KLAX-YMML thrown in for good measure.
JB, how many days off does it take you to "normalise" you time clock..if you ever do. I did one each of the three flights over a four week period, up the front as well, and my sleeping clock was all over the place for 2 weeks+ when I returned. And then for you to set off again when your clock is not yet re-balanced back to Melbourne time must mean you build up more fatigue quicker each cycle..Not a good thing, considering what you do.
Generally long haul trips are separated by sufficient time to recover; to a degree at least. Sims can be the fly in the ointment, having a nasty habit of happening right in the middle of any break. At the moment they aren't counted as flying hours, but as they can happen at any time of the day, and are more draining than the real thing, perhaps they should be. When on leave it's amazing how good you start to feel, just about the time you have to go back to work. So, I guess it takes weeks to get over the coughulative effects.
Some flights are worse than others. Oz/USA is actually not bad at all, and I find I recover within a day or two. Flights in the other direction take about 4 days to get over. I find the 9/10 is easier than the 1/2. In days past, I did a lot of the 29/30 via HK, and found that routing to be quite good.
I think the most tiring flying that I've ever done was the 767 domestic operation. Right now, just about every time I set foot in an aircraft, I'll get about 15 hours of flying. That limits the number of days that I can work in any month dramatically (100 hours/30 days). Domestic flying gave a fraction of those hours, so you were at work much more often. Domestic days also include hours of dead time (i.e. between flights/pre-flight, etc), where you may well working, but not actually accruing any flying hours. And, of course, they don't have heavy crews.
The regulators (around the world) have dropped the ball on this. Handing fatigue management over to the companies will not result in positive outcomes, but that's pretty much what has happened. FRMS systems are seen as a way of making people work harder, as there won't be the defined rules that there are now.
If pilots actually pulled the pin every time they'd had no sleep prior to a duty, there'd be bugger all flights. Where you have a good crew rest, and a heavy crew, there's ways to manage this. But not everyone has that luxury.
