Being a bean-counter must be such a doddle.
We spend money on things but we want to spend less on those things (except us…) and get the same or better output. Some of those things are humans.
So, we need to get fewer humans to produce the same output as the current group of humans, or pay the current group of humans less to produce the same output. The ideal outcome is that we pay fewer humans, less, to get a better output. (Let’s be honest: The ideal outcome is that we pay them nothing.)
Fatigue is an impediment to the achievement of our ideal outcome. So, we’ll just spin it into an industrial relations bargaining chip used by the greedy and unscrupulous rather than a substantive risk to safety. Manoeuvre arrangements so that fatigue becomes a matter to be dealt with internally and privately, on an individual case-by-case basis, rather than having generally applicable and objective limits.
Come the year 1990, when we have pilot-less cockpits and controller-less ATC, we’ll shift our focus to the humans who maintain the equipment. There’s another bunch of greedy and unscrupulous workers who use fatigue as an industrial relations bargaining chip.
Eventually we’ll achieve nirvana, where the only thing we spend money on is us bean-counters.
Job done!