As cabin crew I know that at the end of a five to seven day block of earlies,getting up at base or downroute is irrelevant and long multi-sector days,sometimes I really feel the tiredness take affect.
In our position as cabin crew this can be seen in the service when our faces crack on day six sector four when trying to say 'hello and goodbye'with company smiles!!,or when someone asks for a drink and when you take it the punter in the next seat asks for one
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On a safety side of things we may be two seconds slower to open the door.
My point here is if our actions are impaired by 'fatigue' the consequences would certainly not be as serious as it would to our colleagues on the flight deck.
No I don't want to fly with any pilot who is p**sed and to my knowledge never have (and IMHO a couple of glasses of wine or a couple of pints outside of 12 hours is NOT p**sed ),however more and more I see pilots on their last sector of a busy tour with lots of early starts and they look very tired and this does concern me.
Both BALPA and to an extent our cabin crew unions need to ensure no increase to our working hours if not fight for a reduction.
I have one day off which is today and I'm back on duty at 0810 tomorrow so to be safe do I have to have my two glasses of red at 1600 with an early dinner to be safe??. Maybe we should look at a minimum early start on our first day back ?.
There are people out there willing to stop us flying for being 'over the limit' and that can only be a good thing for all concerned but I can't see these same people doing the same if they see we're tired!!.
I finish by asking all those highly paid 'journos' out there to reduce their alcohol intake and it may help them stop getting so many facts mixed up and producing such sh*t articles on their front pages.If I can find some pretty Airbus F/O on 100K I may have to say goodbye to the Missus!!.
NJR.