Originally Posted by
Aiza
thanks for the well - written post, it has made me reconsider many of my thoughts about Emirates. i have a question though , if you fly 100 hours in a month , which results to 900 hours in 9 months, having run out of all your hours (considering 900 is the GCAA limit for the year), dont you have the other 3 months as off ??.
Thanks
What they do is they factor in 30 days of leave (as opposed to your contractual 42 days).
Then you get rostered as the augmenting pilot for freighter or pax flight that require a 3 man crew, hence only a small part of the time flown is calculated towards your monthly/yearly total.
Additionally there is the factoring issue on the ULR flights, I.e if the flight has a block time of 14 hours each leg, since you operate one way and augment the other the total hours that go towards your monthly/yearly total would be about 21 hours as opposed to the 28 you spent at work.
Last but not least since the greedy buggers are never pleased, if you are maxed out on your hours they can also roster you for simulator support.
I have on a number of occasions, exceeded 900 hours but was still legal to fly. In fairness though the last time I had to stop due to hours I was given a whole bunch of off days after I refused them taking my leave.
The real issue is not the 100hrs per month (although unsustainable) but the mix of flying, and lack of time off or leave to fully recover. I would say half the time spent at work is when the average person is asleep. Add to that min rest, combined rest, plus west-east and ULR, short haul, etc and the mix is now toxic.