BTB et al,
The purpose of my provocative post was twofold, albeit somewhat tongue in cheek but highlighting a very serious problem.
First to demonstrate that no issue is sacrosanct in easyJet. All things are just a matter of money. If it is 'Legal' you are expected to be compliant with the companies demands, REGARDLESS of common sense or what an individual thinks is safe.
Second and most importantly, and BTB highlighted it very well, was that ANY incentive to exercise discretion is WRONG!
The length of days we work here at easyJet are ridiculous and I am sure that soon to be released research on microsleeps and 'sleep inertia' will bear this out (Australia leads the push on this and you wonder why it is the safest country in the world to fly on RPT). But back to the main point; we already are too tired at the end of any rostered duty (read here long multisector, short turnaround duties, broken sleep patterns, irregular hours, constantly changing rosters, management attitude induced stress and so on) that gets near to discretion being required to complete it, regardless of cause.
Yet you deny my request to be paid for exercising discretion simply because it is a financial incentive to extend beyond an already marginal safe fatigue level yet you are willing to go into discretion to get home at 11PM on a Saturday night or to save inconveniencing passengers!
How loud must I say that these are both oft quoted causes of fatigue induced errors. I don't care if you ARE superman BTB ( I have seen you do strange things although I have yet to see you wear your undies on the outside
) neither I nor you are fit to extend duty periods AFTER 11 or 12 hours of continuous duty, without a break of any real kind, to continue flight let alone depart an outstation KNOWING that you can't make it inside currently permitted maximum duty periods let alone use of discretion, otherwise the maximum legal duty periods would include those discretionary hours as standard.
Another thought, if legally permitted discretion is safe then why is it a 'hanging offence' to quote an eJ management pilot, to use discretion more than 2 hours when the legal limit is 3? Has the CAA seen a trend in easyJet rostering practises they don't like and put a flea in an ear somewhere?
The issue here is one of SAFETY nothing else!
On another note BTB has never been pressured to exercise discretion by Crewing, there areand were pilots in easyJet who were denied/refused Command ooportunities because they complained about rostering and so on.. imagine the personal cost if they said no to the Captain who wanted to get home on Saturday night! I am not saying the Captain will give the crew a hard time but when management find out that it was another crew member who said NO then the may as well start looking for another career! If people were not afraid of punitive action here at easyJet I am sure there would be louder complaints about individuals in Crewing pressuring crews quite strongly to exercise discretion "you are the only ones we have" "you WILL go into discretion" "if you don't then we have to cancel several flights" "are you refusing a duty" etc etc. This has ALL got to stop. Crewing should never even mention or refer to discretion .. if the
Crew and Captain don't volunteer then that is the end of it!
It is high time the rostering and other people management issues at easyJet were given a good hard safety based assessment by qualified people other than those within the eJ system.
There's a challenge 'Ray'. Get some fatigue researchers in to have a good look at us during or towards the end of summer!
Then publish the results openly.
All of the issues I have highlighted in my posts bear directly on the topic of this thread:
'easyJet morale at rockbottom'
I have got to say that it wasn't there at the time of the original post..and we still aren't there.. but I am sure I can see it through the murk just below our toes.