This all works great, assuming your seniority allows you to control the minutiae of your schedule.
Commercial aviation being what it is, and the concomitant requirement to keep all available metal moving in a financially advantageous way, there can be absolutely no opportunity for healthy rest on a long haul fleet. Always faced with a forced sleep schedule, the body remains in complete and systemic opposition to the home time zone it accustoms itself to.
This is viewed by a growing number in the medical science community as the primary reason long haul pilots’ immune systems tend to under-perform, they die of various causes significantly earlier than the mean average. Available statistics are quite alarming. The continuous and unrelenting shock to the system is something evolution never intended for us, nor apparently, a stress we are readily able to adapt to.
My advice after many years on the long-liners? Try to do it early in your career, and get back to short haul after you’ve had your fill, sooner rather than later. Your grandkids are something you’ll not want to miss.
Last edited by bugg smasher; 19th Nov 2008 at 01:44.