Hi GlueBall: I do know what it's like to travel several time zones - I make the trip between Europe and Australia several times a year - prior to 9/11, on the flight deck. As my comment stated, there are many factors that affect fatigue risk; a 40 hour layover is not necessarily the remedy to cure fatigue. Many external stressors can present themselves as flight deck errors but their origin has nothing to do with the 'job.' It's not just pilots who are affected; LAME's have much the same issues over a 12 hour tour of duty and the same attention regarding fatigue risk is not yet addressed at the maintenance level. Fatigue is a very big subject that has many contributors and it is deserving of a wider lattitude of consideration. Prescriptive regulation is not all together right, either. If you are a mother or father with a new born child, sleep deprivation is an issue. You can have 40 hours off but only get about 4 hours of quality sleep when at home. Yet, under current proposals, you would be fit to fly. This was my point. In respect of short haul, I'm not convinced that limiting the number of sectors is going to address fatigue. As I said, this is a big subject and an emotive one, from the comments on this thread.