Rest

[FlyChicaga]

Because of terrible weather at your hub airport, you only flew half of your flights for the day. However, you are required to wait for reassignment. This wait turns out to be about seven hours, when you are assigned a deadhead flight for a reduced rest overnight in a major city. This makes your duty day about 15 and one half hours, and you are looking at the minimum eight hours rest. When you arrive, you find your hotel is 30 minutes away in downtown, and you must wait in a large line for a taxi since it's too late for van service.

You are dragging already from exhaustion, and you notice your crew is really looking drained. You also realize you'll all only get about 5-6 hours of sleep tonight, at best.

What should you do?

[JEP]

Give crew scheduling a call a try to get a room closer to the apt. and don't forget to mention your duty time (are you getting close to max allowed time?) Of course that is with my limited knowledge about 121 ops.

[Doug Taylor]

Does your airline have a 'behind the door' policy?

For example, our agreement says that regardless of what happens, we're guaranteed at least 8 hours 'behind the hotel room door'.

Often we end up pushing back our report time or the departure to get at least 8 hours of rest apart from transportation time and such.

[Mr_Creepy]

Wow Doug you have a cushy job. The only "behind the door" policy at Eagle was the door of the chief pilots office LOL.

We were told that crew rest included "transportation, local in nature."

[FlyChicaga]

No behind the door policy. Doug, PM me. I'd like to know more about it.

[Doug Taylor]

Not cushy, but you're going to have to grow a set of cajones if two hours of your 8 hour break in duty is transportation and the company is hunky dory with it.

[MQAAord]

[ QUOTE ]
Wow Doug you have a cushy job. The only "behind the door" policy at Eagle was the door of the chief pilots office LOL.

We were told that crew rest included "transportation, local in nature."

[/ QUOTE ]

Ha! Did you ever just give up and sleep on the plane? We used to when stand-ups would go late. What was the point in going to the hotel for 3 or 4 hours.

[Doug Taylor]

See, you had an airplane with a bathroom!

The chances of me catching a few ZZZ's in MQT on a Beech 1900 at 11pm in December were pretty much slim to none.

In the mighty Beech, once that engine was off, so were all chances of having conditioned air.

[JAM]

Can you have scheduling start your rest time from when you actually left the airport? They should be able to do that for you. If not, call the chief pilot to get them to help. If they dont want to help, tell them you're calling in 'fatigued' and will be contacting the FAA to discuss the safety policies of an airline that intimidates its crews into being cheated out of much-needed rest. Then again, maybe you're on probation

[C650CPT]

It sounds like the Company is partly to blame for mismanaging the crew, so I would have less of a problem throwing a flag on the play and let them figure out what to do about the next day. In life you tend to get what you expect, and I would expect to get a fair night's rest. Was the person in charge of the crew movement aware of the diminishing window of crew rest? Poor planing on thier part should NOT constitute a need for heroic efforts on your part.

Jim

[typhoonpilot]

[ QUOTE ]
Because of terrible weather at your hub airport, you only flew half of your flights for the day. However, you are required to wait for reassignment. This wait turns out to be about seven hours, when you are assigned a deadhead flight for a reduced rest overnight in a major city. This makes your duty day about 15 and one half hours, and you are looking at the minimum eight hours rest. When you arrive, you find your hotel is 30 minutes away in downtown, and you must wait in a large line for a taxi since it's too late for van service.

You are dragging already from exhaustion, and you notice your crew is really looking drained. You also realize you'll all only get about 5-6 hours of sleep tonight, at best.

What should you do?

[/ QUOTE ]

FAA flight and duty time limitations are pathetic. If there is nothing in your contract or the FAR's to prevent the company from treating you that way you would be wise to just keep your mouth shut and go along. Only up to the point that you are too fatigued to operate the aircraft safely, in which case you call in sick or fatigued ( however you want to phrase it ).

If you really want to be tired try flying 121 Supplemental one day. Somebody left out a word in those regs ( consecutive ). As in 8 consecutive hours of rest. It's so much fun when it is broken into smaller portions, an hour here, 4 hours there, a couple more to make eight.

The European's have it all over the US in this regard. Our company policy is:

Minimum Rest, the greater of:
1. The preceeding duty period, or
2. 12 hours

further ... the room allocated the crew member must be available for occupation for a minimum of 10 hours.

When somebody I am flying with begins to complain about a short overnight I just look at them and laugh. They have no idea until they fly in the States.

Typhoonpilot

[EatSleepFly]

[ QUOTE ]
Minimum Rest, the greater of:
1. The preceeding duty period, or
2. 12 hours

[/ QUOTE ]

I like it!

[supercell86]

i just wish the FAA would increase pilot rest periods.....it all goes back to the...."would you rather have convienience or would you rather die" because many mistakes happen because of lack of rest...in fact i was on an airline recently....a regional carrier, i wont mention names......but the f/a never gave us a breifing, which is required, and we took off and the pres. circuit breaker broke.....our ears were killing us, and my father had to see a doctor afterwards, the pilots never said a thing about it....and believe me it was bad.......very bad.....and i AM CONVINCED it was because the crew was on a reduced rest schedule.....

[mtsu_av8er]

Originally Posted by supercell86

. . . we took off and the pres. circuit breaker broke.....our ears were killing us, and my father had to see a doctor afterwards, the pilots never said a thing about it . . .

How did you find out that the "pressure circuit breaker" broke??

[DE727UPS]

"What should you do"

If the Capt is in agreement, I'd have him call scheduling and tell them you're rest will have to start when you get to the hotel otherwise they could be looking at a fatigue call sometime the next day. If they say no, you simply call fatigue when you need to.

[Kingairer]

Originally Posted by mtsu_av8er

How did you find out that the "pressure circuit breaker" broke??

You can see if from Seat 18F apparently.

[EDUC8-or]

Originally Posted by supercell86

i just wish the FAA would increase pilot rest periods.....it all goes back to the...."would you rather have convienience or would you rather die" because many mistakes happen because of lack of rest...in fact i was on an airline recently....a regional carrier, i wont mention names......but the f/a never gave us a breifing, which is required, and we took off and the pres. circuit breaker broke.....our ears were killing us, and my father had to see a doctor afterwards, the pilots never said a thing about it....and believe me it was bad.......very bad.....and i AM CONVINCED it was because the crew was on a reduced rest schedule.....

If you were on a CRJ and the cabin pressure went nuts it probably wasn't because of a lack of rest. A monkey could work the system. Also there are several backups so I really doubt there was a problem with the cabin pressure. If the pressure got too high the crew would have to perform an emergency depressurization and if it was too low the masks would drop. I'm pretty sure an ERJ has several backups as well.

[CFIse]

Originally Posted by EDUC8-or

If you were on a CRJ and the cabin pressure went nuts it probably wasn't because of a lack of rest. A monkey could work the system. Also there are several backups so I really doubt there was a problem with the cabin pressure. If the pressure got too high the crew would have to perform an emergency depressurization and if it was too low the masks would drop. I'm pretty sure an ERJ has several backups as well.

Look - if you're going to ruin these perfectly good stories with facts we're never going to get anywhere :-)

[BobDDuck]

Originally Posted by Kingairer

You can see if from Seat 18F apparently.

I doubt it. It's 2P6 which is on the right side, so there is really no way to see it, even from the cockpit door. Besides... what sort of RJ has row 18? Oh wait... it's one of those "should really be a mainline RJs". That's it right there. If those planes went to mainline like they should, they would probably have better rest rules for the pilots. And then they wouldn't have been tired and missed the master warning light that flashed in their face to tell them that the "press cont mod" CB was out. Yeah. That's it.


Sorry, sitting reserve for the 5th straight day with nothing to do does tend to get my sarcastic tendencies up a bit.

[Kingairer]

The better RJ has 18 rows.

[BobDDuck]

Originally Posted by Kingairer

The better RJ has 18 rows.

I didn't think about that RJ. Good call... Now, better? I'm not so sure about that one. You only get half as good a chance of having to crush in next to a really cute chick on the deadhead legs. Then again, you only have half the chance of getting stuck next to a fat old man too. I'll call it a wash.