boredcounter, you say:
Pure opinion, every time fatigue is an issue, but the complainant is prepared to drive 2Hrs home?
well, what would you like he/she to do? Find public transport at all times of the day or night? Lets face it, impossible. Stay in the car and sleep? Then drive home in time to turn round and come back to the airport? Go sick every time?
What your implying just doesn't correspond to the real situation we face as pilots doing the job. After working your butt off for a company and maybe being away from home for a while, you want to get home to your own bed, end of story. That's why people drive home! And anyway, you can't help thinking angrily when your faced with this situation, "if the company thinks it's ok for me to go into discretion and be responsible for tens of millions of pounds worth of machinery and hundreds of lives in the air and on the ground, then I'm f****ng well ok to drive myself home!
". Like it or not, that's the mindset that crap rostering produces.
You also say:
In over 15 years of short haul flying Ops, I have had very few cases of fatigue sickness. I have more fingers than cases. I do not doubt the work is hard, plse do not get me wrong. Every case of (claimed) fatigue has been notified PRE rest period.
People do not go sick "fatigued" because the usual reply from crewing is "are you refusing to fly?" Then "well, its legal." Next comes the phone call from a pilot manager asking you why you're fatigued when other pilots have flown exactly the same duty and they haven't reported "fatigued". A load of unneccessary hassle and bull!!!! I think you'd agree, especially when the reason you're phoning in "fatigued" is because your bloody knackered!! Add to this the fact that this is probably not a one off event, but a rostering pattern that repeats itself again and again, and you'll see why pilots just "go sick" instead of "fatigued".
Anyway, you prove my point about the companies attitude to the word "fatigue" in your own posting.
Every case of (claimed) fatigue has been notified PRE rest period.
Why do you use the word "claimed" in brackets? Seems to me your implication is that you don't actually believe these cases of fatigue. QED.
