Originally Posted by
V-Jet
You’re assuming you have enough time off ‘back home’ to have been awake through a local day/night sleep. Maybe work with the company a little and get to the point (as I was for pretty much 20 years of my life - without the benefit of PER-LHR sectors) where I didn’t have a ‘home’ port. If you work hard enough, you won’t be awake all day before you blast off to LHR or PER. Alan could turn out to be OK. Through a delirious fog of tiredness, naturally...
And for the Angels out there thinking these comments are rubbish - just try living an aircrew pattern for even a paltry 12 months and see what it’s like. You have absolutely NO idea and if you did, you would not get on an overnight sector ever again unless you knew the entire crew had at least ten days off before you got onboard. Unlike you, I DO know what I’m talking about.
The reality for those involved in any sort of work disturbing the normal waking-sleeping cycle is that not only is quality of life reduced, quantity of life tends to reduce substantially.
That Qantas need a new fleet is axiomatic, that the regulatory limits for the long overdue aircraft do not permit its planned tour of duty requirements,
ought concern both pilots and cabin crew for that there is zero reputable science supporting its adoption.
If labour organisations and regulatory bodies alike were actually concerned about health effects any consideration would include a long term health study.
The 'studies' Qantas are undertaking are neither sufficient in scope, scale nor time to even be considered anything but marketing.
I found myself sitting up and reading about the effects of insufficient sleep. It has been making me stupider, fatter, unhappier, poorer, sicker, worse at sex, as well as more likely to get cancer, Alzheimer's and to die in a car crash. At the same time, my lack of sleep has been slowly but inexorably shrinking a) my chances of living into my mid 60s, b) my testicles.
That the industry permits any change to the current hard limits without science is troubling, that the regulator fails to demand it a concern and that people do not appreciate the long term damage it is doing to them a huge concern.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...-walker-review