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Old 16th Oct 2009, 21:00
  #58 (permalink)  
pineridge
 
Join Date: Aug 2006
Location: norway
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Bear11 said...............
" Even if you do 100 hours per month every month, FTLs will mean you have a few months off in most countries who have max 900/1,000 hours per year, let alone in some airlines where union agreements mandate less than that"



I understand your point but you are missing a serious fundamental about flying; it is not acceptable from a safety perspective to have a gradual erosion of capabilities from the beginning of a duty period to the end.
As a pilot one can be called upon to produce all the skill and experience one can muster at the last few minutes of a duty day/month/year.
To accept that a pilot can fly right up to the maximum permitted FTL`s
for a complete duty period, or for a maximum month or year for that matter, without experiencing a degradation of performance, is totally unrealistic.
Even the first day after a relaxing vacation period a pilot can be in the danger zone at the end of a maximum duty day with multiple sectors in bad weather.
My point is that fatigue is cumulative and is bloody dangerous; the fact that airline CEO`s and government regulators don`t seem to understand the situation is a tragedy, and any FTL`s that ignore the cumulative effect are not worth a pinch of coon-merde.
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