Originally Posted by meat bomb
Interesting figure, I'd be interested to see the figures for non airline operators , police or ems operators for example. They use for the most part single pilot machines with crews moving from day to night shifts and back again frequently, greater risk to aircraft, crew and bystander there I think than in a multi crew machine at altitude.....
Having previously flown for the Police for a few years, in my experience it wasn't such a huge problem. "Captain's Discretion" was relatively infrequently used because of the knock-on effect on rostering. It was strictly controlled by the terms of the Police Air Ops Manual.
On the other hand, I'm now in a different job. I am another of those pilots who, having realised I was too tired to continue to drive home because of extremely long duty hours. I have pulled off the road for a quick ten minute zizz on quite a few occasions. Once I was awakened by my wife ringing me at 01:00 hrs, asking where the hell I was. I was freezing cold in my car in a layby, having slept for about three hours. Trouble was, I was supposed to be back on shift at 06.30!