Originally Posted by
C441
Morno. There are two separate issues here.
The first is producing appropriate rosters to minimise the fatigue associated with any duty, in this case, particularly long tours.
The second is receiving appropriate monetary/lifestyle compensation for such duties.
In the case of the first, it needs to be the regulator and employer (with some input from the pilot body) that determine what are appropriate and acceptable patterns of duty for this type of flying; hence we have CAO's and FRMS manuals and rule sets. This includes crew complement, rest time both on and off the aircraft, nutrition, satisfactory crew rests and so on. This aspect of the flying should never be driven industrially and as such it is not up to the pilots to "maybe best to put your salaries on hold and trade some of it for other benefits, such as increased crewing complements, longer layovers to assist with fatigue management" Fatigue management is not an industrial issue, it's a regulatory issue.
What is an industrial issue is negotiating recompense for any aspect of commercial flying. In the distant past AIPA negotiated night credits - possibly in lieu of other salary compensation. I don't know I wasn't employed back then. In the last EBA this was partially traded, some may say given, away to fly the 787. Arguably that's what you do in a negotiation. Whether one person thinks night credits are relevant or right doesn't matter. They'd been negotiated and were then traded to achieve another goal.
I have a particular interest in Fatigue Management among pilots and what I won't condone is the relieving of the regulator and the airlines of their duty, in order to achieve an industrial gain.
I understand where you’re coming from C441, but what I’m saying is get in the position where they have additional protections over the minimum requirements stated by CASA in regards to fatigue management.
In a past company, we had the CAO’s, but we also had more stringent company requirements again, which were better than the CAO’s. This is what you need to be targeting. And you full well know that the company is going to be pushing for the CASA fatigue management to be the target.