I guess one of the worst parts is waiting to walk up to flight deck after rest. Eg Last ULR fight. After resting etc I went to the cabin only to find the cc doing their duties and serving the pax. However it then becomes a battle to get to the front of the aircraft where you need to be. Sure you can tell the cc to remove the carts, but I am sure they do this continally for resting crew already and it does not help the crew cohesion. They then think we are pr...s and not interested in waiting. It all ends up worse than if we just went with the aircraft designers and had the bunks where they are supposed to be.
EK does flights with 1 Capt and 2 FOs with the same set up. With earplugs or ipods shielding the skipper completely from what is going on, just imagine the poor guy sleeping through an emergency in economy and bearing all the responsibility. It wouldn’t help him hearing anything anyway, because with panicking passengers and crew, the trolleys well stuck between rows, he will never make up the 100 meters to the cockpit anyway.
Nice job EK, safety first as you always pretend.
I see censorships alive and well, I made a perfectly valid comment about a pink noise generator which is a device that is used to assist people in sleeping, and it's been deleted. The Ipod suggestion remains why is that?.
The Qantas crew rests on the 744 are located in the cockpit behind a curtain and at the rear of the upper deck behind a door beside the galley, easy access to food and the toilet! The QF/BA merger is another story that I definately won't be losing sleep over...
Extract from hastily amended Boeing 747-8i brochure:
". . and a further advantage, compared to our larger and uglier competitor, is the carefully modulated and optimised aerodynamic white noise designed to be just sufficient to blank out unwanted sounds and ensure a deep, refreshing sleep for passengers and resting crew alike . . . "
Not the best plan to have the crew rest area a long way from the flightdeck really, amazing that the certification people don't insist on it being within spitting distance really.
There are multiple incidents that were avoided becoming accidents when resting crew/supernumerary crew/able bodies (travelling crew) were able to help up front (eg. Sioux City). some airlines want their seat position as to be able to identify them. Smart move.
EK decided to go the other way, to dump them as far away from the cockpit as possible, even when it means doing this with the only Captain on board. Silly move.
I go with the remark that it dazzles me that regulators worldwide just swallow this uneccessary move.
LOL... They definitley all have better rest areas than NWA. I remember when I was coming back from Detroit to Japan this year i looked behind me to see a pilot sitting all dressed in uniform. I wasn't sure if he would be flying later or not but i'd glance every so often to see him awake. Anyway i dosed and when i woke up later he wasn't there anymore. Infact he wasn't there for several hours, until the next morning when i saw him sitting back down behind me. Scry stuff too, to think he had just been flying the plane he was asleep in no less than five minutes.
point of information: uniformed pilots in the passenger cabin are going to be sleeping. Often they'll get seated by the Frequent Travelers in the hope that said folks realize this basic biological fact more than the people in scheduling.
At least, that's my experience on the short hauls. Gotta say, EK is pretty impressive in this one. So do they put positioning flight crew in Y class as well? Strikes me that would be something of an upgrade.
QF A380 Tech crew rest is exactly where airbus designed it to be. Superb facilities, bed and reclining armchair with the only drawback being the aircraft is so quiet, the pilots chit-chat on the flight deck can be heard in the crew rest cinema.
ps they also have their own private toilet/washroom facilities, which is big enough for 'oversized functions' and to roll out a swag and camp in (odour permitting) .
Think I may have solved EK's problems with the ''too quiet to sleep A380''.
Having just flown LHR - DXB with EK, seated in the rear row of business, I can totally confirm there is no hint of the claimed quiet calm silence anywhere near THAT area due to the positioning of the lounge bar - quite possibly the most noisy and uncomfortable 7 hour sector for a very long time! If you are hoping for sleep on your flight, avoid the last 5 rows of EK's 380 business cabin at all costs.
With EK's gravitation toward business class crew rest, all they need to do is assign those seats to resting crew, and hey presto, instantly no more problems with low noise levels..............
I think a lot of people inclusive airline mangers miss the point completely.
Inflight rest is a legal requirement on longhaul flights. It is illegal to fly fatigued, meaning unrested. If a very high percentage of crew report unable to get rest, where does the legislator put airline management when they can get away by simply pretending they consider the rest facility adequate? Are they above the law? Who is entitled to determine the quest by the victims? The legislator, management or the victims? Is there a body that would inquire on that, or is it entirely left to the airlines? If so, where does that put the legislator other than being a fig leaf? A crew en route is caught in the act and cannot pledge fatigued and sit back, unless they put the same strain on their colleagues. They must be able to contest a solution that is inadequate, but today they can’t!
Cockpit access is legally to be restricted to a minimum. With bunks outside of it, this means at least 8 unnecessary openings, easily detectable by bad elements, as each time a pilot passes through the whole cabin, he will be accessing the cockpit very soon. They are nicely marked by either their uniform or their ridiculous pyjamas. This basically runs against safety regulations, as the original bunk solution would avoid it entirely. Any regulator to elaborate on this? Have they even thought about this?
Paying a lot of money, the F and C-class passengers certainly don’t like to be disturbed by the coming and going of crew. In C and Y-class these some 800 meters by cockpit crew per flight are a constant annoyance for the cabin crew, as most of the time they are in the cabin with the trolleys. All this would have been avoided with the original bunk solution. What do passenger service gurus think about this?
The confining of the resting tech crew into the a.. of the aircraft also works against emergency situations. Imagine such a situation with the resting colleagues adjacent to the cockpit and the working PIC would NOT call them for assistance and ending in big trouble. He would be heavily bashed for not working according best practice and optimum use of resources, as lost over the oceans and deserts every hand comes in great when in trouble. Would anyone bash a company for providing rest facilities that hinder such assistance and might end up in a worse situation?
The AOM obliges the Captain to occupy his seat under “certain emergencies”. If he operates with two FOs, what does the regulator say? Is this article of the AOM void, just because an airline chose to put up the resting skipper in a place he will not be able to leave in “certain emergencies”? Would this captain be let off the hook if a decision of his replacing FO-PIC proves wrong and causes havoc? Can you make a FO fully accountable? Are they fully trained for that? Can you make the company accountable for a incident happening due to inadequate rest facility? Or does the Captain remain the one and only being accountable? Has anyone, any serious regulator though about this?
It strikes me that if a crew is not rested and fatigued, he is basically illegal. If a captain is not in his seat during “certain emergencies”, he is illegal. But if these crew criticize the layout of the rest facilities, making them fatigued and unable to access their required seat, they face complete disregard from the company. Where does that leave them?
Perhaps there was a contest with Emirates management to set their A380 fleet apart from others and find the least suitable spot within pressurized area....
Too bad Airbus gave in those odd wishes (shouldn't have supported this "solution"), but on the other hand the customer is king.
The QF/BA merger is another story that I definately won't be losing sleep over...
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