Would these be the 'legacy carriers', who's crew enjoy 'unsustainable conditions'?
Most likely, as most non-legacy carriers have not been around for decades...
In any case there are many legacy (and non-legacy) carriers out there that have done back of the clock flying. Landing after a 16+ hour TOD and crossing multiple time zones, even with time off in the bunk and relief crews in good weather is tough. In my experience, long haul pilots are always fatigued to some extent, and it is simply a matter of managing it as best you can (and knowing your limits).
Perhaps this type of issue never happened in the past because mobile phones did not really come into play until the last decade
... or maybe it was most guys up the front were doing what they were meant to... flying the aircraft - that would be called prioritizing.
What's that saying?
Aviate, navigate, communicate. Even if you consider the texting communicating he got it wrong...
There are a lot of issues in this incident, and fatigue was only a small part of it.
Let me ask you this - what would have happened if the Captain had been incapacitated in this incident and there had been other factors at play?? It would seem from an initial analysis that the FO was pretty much overloaded with a reasonably standard approach
before he flew the return leg.
What if this had happened at the other end, on the return trip when fatigue had really set in??
You can start wherever you want, but situational awareness was lost here in fairly standard conditions. That flags possible training issues to me. How about following standard procedures - what about the sterile flight deck period - if you're going to break that rule, what other ones are you going be let slip through?
There are so many issues to talk about, and we are seeing it happen time and time again. The problem is it's going to take a royal commission before it gets fixed. And that is the real worry.
BW.