Originally Posted by
air_bus_driver
Thanks for the replies. 🙏
"having a life doesn’t always get a look-in." This explains everything. Instead of working to live, I will be living to work then.
Days off down route were a problem in a previous operator I worked for, along with standby days becoming your days off, even though you were on a one-hour callout to airport report standby, which didn't allow a very long leash to actually use those days for anything more than popping to the supermarket. Even heading out for a run would be difficult if you did say a 10k loop, factoring in having a shower and cooling down, and then getting to the airport. Swimming as fitness? Forget it mate. Can't miss the call... Of course, you can file a duty period for these, but unless you have a defined start and end to the "standby other than at the airport," then you can guess the operator's intentions here.
Days off down route and standby days becoming a day off shouldn't be a short term solution to a problem of excessive demand, and the paperwork should match up with what you were doing - so if you are doing a lot of standby duty, then this should be accounted for as part of your cumulative duty. If the roster instability becomes the norm, it's clear the operator doesn't have enough crew and a decent FOI should be able to see what's going on. Unless they're being presented with a different roster...
I think your only course of action is to assess the situation amongst your colleagues, and if there is enough dissatisfaction, broach the subject as a group. In the shorter-range end of the market this can become pervasive as you fly an hour to sit eight hours in an FBO (Hotel room? No need mate; just turn the lights off and hope the other twenty pilots crammed in their on a day-stop will keep quiet...) then fly back and crawl home. Doing that day in day out, as is common on short-range aircraft, can be difficult to withstand in the long run. Do your days off down route become actual days off, or can they revert back to duty days if a flight comes in? One way to resolve that would be to be genuinely off down route - although I guess being in air ambulance that is not morally as easy to accomplish.
This can be a wonderful job - usually because of the people you share the cockpit with and the support you get on the difficult days. A work-life-family balance is incredibly important. And ultimately, if you can't fix it, move on at the earliest opportunity. Unfortunately high turn-over doesn't effect change in these types of operators as there is usually an underlying problem with the business model or management.
Good luck - you're not being unreasonable wanting to have a work/life balance.