Originally Posted by
I'm Off!
Sorry, Mr Angry, but absolutely not. How can you do that with regular 8 hour time shifts on the West Coast? Get up at midnight with nothing to do and nowhere to go? Recipe for mental health problems long term. Add to that the fact that staying on UK time does not absolve you of the 5-8 night sleep (UK time) that you miss almost completely every month whilst flying to or from various places, making staying on UK time both pointless and impossible...
Thats it spot on. It is a challenge. I didn’t think to reply to Mr Angry, unless you’ve tried LH, it is a bit of a mystery.
Similar to you mention, whether you adjust to local or not the elephant in the room isn’t the jet lag per say on a 3 day quick fire trips (local light sources, diet, rhythmn of local life) more the rest periods run in multiples of 24 hours. A bit like shift work problems. Means you can’t sleep two proper periods in 24 (unless you’re super human). So like you say, no matter what you do, on a 24 hour layover you’re missing a sleep cycle.
Mr Angry’s post mentioned striving for recovery on company time. The achievable is quite the opposite. Due to previously mentioned rest periods (24/48) that are antagonistic to the circadian rhythm, far from being able to recover on Co time, your time “on clock” is actively further disrupting your sleep cycle each time you undertake another 24/48 rest. Attempting recovery is forced onto days off. And this is where it can become a somewhat futile pursuit; dual aspects of limited time to achieve this and another shift reversal to adjust for within a small time frame. There is often not enough time to recover the sleep deficit and then re adjust your now night shift cycle back to days. Particularly on 2 days off, and noteably if one has any semblance of local life around him/her that is following U.K. time that may detract from a free ability to sleep when required. And that is even before days off are considered to be free of fatigue issues enough to be downtime in their own right; in essence, to experience required personal time free from work inflictions enough to enjoy all the psychological benefits that bestows. After all, we’re not machines!
This is not a unique BA characteristic, however BA do have an increasingly achievable high personal pilot annual hours work rate for a euro LH airline. I’ve noticed it a lot on my fleet with the work rate at the moment with not common rosters characterised with runs of 2 days off post trip. This increasingly effective ability to utilise its worker units (an open question with a new rostering system) is - despite industrial agreements forged in good faith under a different landscape - amplifying the empirically flawed and questionable ethics of the underpinning regulatory protection system that manages humans working for the flying industry.
I find it insightful to at least know and discuss the mechanics of why fatigue starts really ramping up on LH with a packed roster. It’s for differing reasons than SH.
Interesting, I read a study from the FAA mentioned something like no duty must be planned unless it’s conceivable that the Pilot has had a chance to gain 6 hours (or was it 8?) sleep within the preceding 24 hours. I gather this includes the whole duty. So you can’t be landing at 0900 unless between 0900 the day before and then, you’d slept fully and not half arsed on a seat for an hour. If that were the case then most 24 hour lay overs would fall foul of that one. I’ll be honest I don’t know the FAA FTL regs.