Since 2009, the airline has accumulated 450 000 flights with a total flight time of more than 1 million hours. Within the period, 70 fatigue-related confidential reports were submitted.
In the latter half of 2015, flight crew fatigue ASRs at Flydubai were running at
around 20 per month. Some of them submitted by me. There were 21 reports in December 2015 alone. I believed then (and still do) that there was a corporate indifference to fatigue at FZ, and that the holes were starting to line up. It was one of the main reasons I left.
When the crash happened, the only thing that surprised me was the location - I could name many FZ destinations that were far more challenging and/or hazardous than Rostov. But that's the thing about fatigue - keep on sending tired crews up night after night, and the destination doesn't make much difference. Sooner or later, two equally fatigued pilots will encounter nasty weather and/or an emergency, and run out of capacity.
What an utter waste of 62 lives.