Can someone explain to me how a pilot who got 3.5 hours sleep in 24 hours, and flew 98 hours in the preceding 30 days is not considered fatigued?
Assuming he did get 3.5 hours sleep in the 24 hours before the flight, is this necessarily the fault of EK? In fact it was a 37.5 hour layover, not 24 hours as is implied each time this statement is rolled out. How much sleep did he get on the whole layover and how did he plan his rest, I wonder?
MEL/406 is a trip I'm quite happy to do because its a quick way of knocking up 28 hours credit with a relatively short recovery time, no more recovery needed than for a night turnaround to India. I recollect that it was this pilots 3rd trip of this type within the mentioned 98 hours in 30 days. An easy 84 hours I reckon. There are trips and chains of duties with potential for accumulative fatigue issues at this airline, such as two crew back from China, AKL/CHC and all annexe flights. His sequence of flights that month was not particularly one of them.
Fatigue management is the responsibility of the crew member as well as the company. I notice that some crew-members treat layovers as a social and/or extreme activity extravaganza when resting would be more appropriate. This is an industry thing and not specific to this airline.
How do 2 pilots, with good records and experience, miss something as seemingly obvious as a 100 tonne difference in weight with the associated lower speeds and power settings?
Because they didn't follow Standard Operating Procedures.
A loadsheet confirmation and MEL would NOT have happened, 100 tonnes difference or not...
For some reason SOPs went out of the window. The flight left 12 minutes early by the way.
