Originally Posted by
Uplinker
+1, or in fact +100.
Big money is what happened: CEOs job is to continually cut operating costs, and crews are expensive because they have to be highly trained, highly proficient and highly skilled - you can't just take someone from the job centre and give them a day's induction course.
So if they can 'get away with' using one crew instead of two crews, they will.
This is why we need to stand up for ourselves. Unfortunately - certainly in the UK - the union and the company councils have clearly been nobbled. Strike action is very rarely taken and rarely even considered. EASA FTLs were just nodded in, and all our union does is talk about things. They never actually do anything. They just talk about fatigue, but never do anything about fatigue.
I mean; "controlled rest", i.e. taking a 20 minute nap sitting in your pilot seat, is a real thing !! That is a blatant admission that crews are fatigued - right there.
Can you imagine if a surgeon, in the middle of an operation; with the patient's chest wide open and tubes everywhere; said to his 'junior' doctor alongside him, "jeez, I am so tired, I cannot keep my eyes open any longer. I am going to take controlled rest", and he sits down with his eyes closed for 20 mins, while all the other doctors just stand around and wait; keeping an eye on the patient's pulse and oxygen levels etc. Utterly ludicrous.
Uplinker I'm with you 100% and more but just a couple of clarifications.
EASA FTL - all the UK AOC ever wanted was a level playing field had they not switched to EASA FTL how many UK would be left?. Many of the UK AOC left in either Industrial agreements or FRM agreements when EASA FTL came in. You could argue the previous yearly block hour agreement VS had was a fatigue mitigation also.
One thing for sure where EASA FTL is completely different to CAP371 is that it's so much easier for crews to swap duties - under CAP371 particularly the (archaic) days off rules it was impossible to swap - now it seems to be the in thing. As you know when it comes to swaps or flying on days off for $$$ Fatigue goes out the window - Nb I'm only joking, sort of.