Colonel Klink
This one I might cop some stick for - but when Sydney goes down to one runway, that is not the Company’s fault. When you hear multiple crews getting on to AMCO and telling them to tell crewing that they won’t be extending, you have to wonder. Now sometimes crew are legitimately tired, and they should get off the aircraft no questions asked. But when people decide at the start of the day before it all turns to crap that they won’t be extending, then perhaps that’s part of the culture issue too. Who does the ‘screw the company’ attitude really hurt?
I will take you to task on this point as your reasoning that pilots won’t extend because they want to “screw the company” is false and malicious.
Virgin Australia has an approved FRMS (Fatigue Risk Management System) in place whereby experts have calculated what is safe and what is not.
If a pilot chooses to exercise discretion, they are in effect saying that they have a greater level of expertise in Fatigue Risk Management than those who designed and implemented the FRMS.
Now if an incident occurs whilst that pilot is operating with the 2 hour discretion period, the pilot is the only one who can be held accountable as he has made a conscious decision to operate outside of the approved FRMS. This could be interpreted as negligence.
And as you say, many pilots make their decision at the start of the day not to extend.
That is in fact the wisest thing to do, rather than making a decision to extend at the end of an already long day where stress and fatigue may impair ones judgement and decision making ability.
And in one well documented case where a pilot did the “company” thing and chose to extend only to incur further delays which took the duty period beyond the allowable 2 hours of discretion, the pilot was thrown to the wolves (CASA) with no support from the company.
The reason that I will always make the decision not to extend is to protect the company, not to screw the company.
And in doing so, I will also protect my passengers, my crew, my aircraft and my licence.