Just an example for those of you reading who may not be aware of the subtleties that are used by airline commercial departments you may want to consider the following:
I have just been rostered the following duties:
Day 1: Report at 1950 local for a 2 sector night duty scheduled to end on blocks at 0555 local the next morning. Actual off duty was 0645 local. Total allowed flight duty (from report to on-blocks last sector) was 11:15. Actual flight duty was 10:30 + 0:30 = 11:00 total duty. No problem there. Next duty scheduled for 2040 local report same day gives 13:50 rest.
Day 2: Report at 2040 local for a 3 sector night scheduled to end on blocks at 0705 local the next morning. Actual off duty was 0820 local. Total allowed flight duty was 10:30. Actual flight duty was 11:10 + 0:30 = 11:40 total duty. 0:40 discretion allowed. No problem there. Next duty scheduled for 0505 local report next morning gives 20:45 rest.
Day 3: Report at 0500 local for a 2 sector day flight scheduled to end on blocks at 1400 local the same day.
Day 4: Report at 0530 local for a 2 sector day flight scheduled to end on blocks at 1455 local the same day.
Day 5: Report 0510 local for a 2 sector day flight scheduled to end on blocks at 1515 local the same day.
This type of schedule, whilst not appearing unduly busy and perfectly legal allows a crew member to report for 2 night duties followed by three early duties. How is the crew member supposed to get home after the duty on day 2, sleep for 7 or 8 hours, get up in the afternoon and then get adequate sleep before an early report the next morning? It makes a mockery of the system where at least 12 hours rest are the legal minimum but no allowance is made for sensible time to readjust from nights into earlies. This causes fatigue, the CAA know it does and yet they do nothing about it.
The other problem is that companies add sectors to duties for various reasons but suddenly the original turn around times are and sector times are somehow reduced so that the new limiting flight duty time is just within 5 minutes of discretion. In reality, the turn arounds are impossible and the the duty ends up going into discretion. The company claims it never rostered the duty into discretion, which is true but they knew full well that the revised times were unrealistic and were confident enough that the crew would go into discretion for up to an hour just so that they could get home.
How little the public now about the fact that the European Working Time Directive does not apply to aircrew. This is the amount of duty hours pilots can do in the UK:
The maximum duty hours for flight crew will not exceed: 55 hours in 1 week, but this figure can be increased to 60 hours when a rostered duty covering a series of duty periods has commenced and is subject to unforeseen delays or 95 hours in any 2 consecutive weeks or 190 hours in any 4 consecutive weeks.
The government and the public are worried about junior doctors working more than 48 hours in a week. If a fatigued doctor makes a mistake, maybe one persons life is at risk. If we make a serious mistake the number of lives at risk is exponentially higher. So, the comment by a doctor "You wouldn't want to be in a plane flown by a pilot who hadn't slept for two days. Why would you want to be looked after by a doctor who hadn't slept for a similar period?" should be turned around and used by our unions who are at the forefront of the battle against duty time limitations that are little more than limited protection for us and very much designed to smooth the way for the airline businesses.
At least we can be thankful here in the UK that we don't have the Italians or the Americans setting our duty time limitations. Mind you, it may only be a matter of time!