A little aside, does anyine remember that fifh gear survey of driving while pi$$ed verses driving while absoultely chinstrapped.....?
Whose driving was worse?
Now I surmise flying of any type is far harder than driving a car and you can sit there and discuss various situations. Let us play devils advocate for a moment and apply Xercules's lamp swinging
to a big jet coming back from the 'stan and the crew does not hear the call from air tragic and augers in.
Is the fact they were short of sleep and felt pressure to man up any justification? Or what about if they mid-air'd into my holiday flight because the RAF are too cheap to buy some "look out look out" system and they were too knackered to keep a good watch?
I appreciate and sympathise with the pax having to spend another night in a rubb but which would they rather?
The converse is true, if you are given crew rest then please use it for the purpose it is intended, spending time inspecting the inside of your eyelid. Not Hookers, Blackjack and Booze!
And surely there must be some legal and safe tablet that can get you a smooth 8 hr kip with no side effects? if not maybe you could get someone to make them - we'd all be millionaires.
The bottom line is, unless there is a cast iron, one off, reason for it you should not be exceeding rest hours and if it coming up regularly then you are understaffed and you owe it to yourself, your crew, your pax, your families and all the people that a pilot error crash would affect to do something about it.
I would rather fly with an airline who delays my flight because there is no safe pilot available rather than one who pushes the envelope to get some more money.
Fly Safe - Not Tired.