It's not so much the total hours for the month but the seeming inability of the schedulers to grasp a few basic concepts. For instance, a 24 hour layover is as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike when you arrive after a two sector freighter pattern NRT-XMN-OKA at 0400 and then you're out the same time the next day for another two sectors. 0400 means you're in the hotel (hopefully) by 0500 and trying to sleep. IF you're not woken by shouting Chinese tourists in your hotel (very, very unlikely you won't be) then you'll maybe sleep until 1100 or even 1200 if you're lucky. Then it's off to bed early, even though you don't feel like it and toss and turn until 0100. Having just drifted off, the alarm goes at 0330 and now you switch from your evening into night/early morning flight of yesterday into early morning/day flight of Okinawa....somewhere in China AGAIN and then back to NRT. Next night it starts all over again and then you get to have a day off in NRT after those 6 days/nights of continuous f*%king around. The schedulers singularly fail to grasp the concept of 18 or 36 hour sleep patterns and we are returning to the bad old days of post AJV/AJX joining, where the scheduling went for a complete bag of worms.
In addition, since we got our 'new' head scheduler they seem to have lost the ability (i.e. the selfish chap is probably telling them to do so) to finish early on our last day and start late(ish) on the first day of duty. SO many guys are now missing their commutes home on their last days or having to arrive back in Japan a day early that it is seriously affecting our senses of humour. It has only happened since this bloke arrived and never used to be the case, so he needs a firm size 12 up his backside.
China, China, China, China. Days into nights and back into days, all within three days. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. It's getting very, very tiresome. TD and GT get to see a lot more of the less-fatiguing pax flying than the rest of us and even they are fed up, so imagine what it's like for we who get one pax trip every two months.
Yep, really am at the limit of my tether and can't see myself staying.