Although there are some parrallels, the civil situation is different. In my time, the 2 Gp GASOs had crew duty limitations which followed CAP371 - The Avoidance of Fatigue in Aircrews. This document is itself not limiting but it does lay down guidelines for which CAA approved operations manual duty and fatigue avoidance procedures are laid down.
I know the GASOs were peacetime limits only and there isn't much peacetime flying these days. But the difference between civil and military is that although exercises and operations are concentrated effort, they don't go on forever. The civil pilot will be faced with his debilitating work pattern for the whole of his working life. While in the RAF, I flew exercises and operations where I got very fatigued. But the short term nature of these meant that the fatigue was largely acute. Chronic fatigue sets in over a period of months and when you put acute fatigue on top of chronic fatigue, then you really are entering the danger zone.
After my 16 years was up, I started Long haul passenger, then long haul freight and have now settled into the much more benign world of short haul pax. In my long haul career, I acheived levels of fatigue I hadn't seen in the military.
And someone mentioned he couldn't understand why the Captain of the EK 340 only got 3 1/2 hours sleep. This is what I wrote on the thread regarding the incidient.
"Take this example of a pattern I was very familiar with.
Departure from LHR at about 7pm UK time. Land at JFK about 10pm NY time, but 2am body clock time. By the time you get to the hotel, it's now 4am body time. Go to bed. Wake up at 3am NY time which is 8am body time because it's when you usually get up and the wake up time your circadian rhythem is programmed for. So you've just had four hours sleep.
You mooch around for most of the morning, then at about 1pm NY time you go back to bed and try to sleep. Except you can't because it's 6pm body time and you're circadian rythem says it's not time to sleep yet.
It's now 5pm NY time and the wake up call goes off which is a bit of a b#gger because you finally dropped off to sleep about 20 minutes ago. You get up, go to the airport for the 8pm NY departure time, for which you aren't feeling at your best for because it's now 1am UK and body time and you have had 4 hours and twenty minutes of low quality sleep in the last 36. You now fly for 7 hours back to LHR landing at 8am feeling like death.
Now imagine you do this 5 or 6 times a month, for 900 flying hours a year, but not always to New York. Perhaps to other time zones in the opposite direction. Now some of you now may begin to understand how this pilot felt at the start of his duty."
However, there may be some some justification for working hard in operational circumstances, but to risk your life and others by flying too hard in an exercise to help your Flight Commander get his promotion, that's nuts.