Disappointed,
Good theory but sadly this is PPrumourNE and anyone can write anything they like (Just like the Sunday Sport - Grandmother has alien baby!). You and I both know that 90% of the things that go on in any company are not known by those at the coalface. In EK it is probably even less than that because all of the pilots have been squeezed out of office jobs so that they can get them on the line flying.
Fact - EK are short of pilots! BYMONEK before you start saying but look at my roster, 30 days off and one trip to El Dorado I will caveat that by saying but not in all categories. It seems clear that the 340 does not have enough pilots to allow for a sensible working pattern but that may be by design. It could be argued that a decision may have been taken that paying a few pilots overtime is less costly than hiring new pilots. The reduction in flight hours recorded for augmented operations would appear to support this arguement. Alternatively we might be struggling to recruit pilots, maybe that is where the 777 rumour comes from. Whichever of these it is will determine whether, and how quickly, things will improve.
The thing I notice is that on the 330 some of the F/Os are pretty laid back and not working too hard. On the 340 some are being worked ridiculously; sadly the bidding system was supposed to protect us but doesn't. If you get the right roster (are senior enough) you can end up with overtime, days off and a decent quality of life. If not minimum days off are the order of the day. The fatigue (heart factor) model was removed from the bidding system, as I understand it, because we would have needed a lot more pilots to crunch the numbers. Wasn't there a doc who was in charge of fatigue? It was in the outer marker, trumpets blarring. It might be an interesting exercise to run the bidding system again with the heart factor applied to see whether there are any conflicts.
The problem must be starting to be noticed by the powers that be, I read that CPA had given us all thanks for working through 'unprecedented levels of sickness' at the end of last year. Now some of that might have been down to 'an unusually cold winter' but some was probably due to fatigue.
Sorry only one fact and some conjecture to try and make sense of it.
Ghost
