A sad day for the first batch of the FIRED 600

[I love twins]

I worked over ten years at an orange LCC based in U.K. and mainland Europe.
The full time rosters gave me health issues. I found it a great deal more tiring to work that schedule than I did working at EK.

Long haul and short haul both have their issues and they require different rest strategies. I never figured out an effective short haul rest strategy aside from going part time, which I couldn’t afford to do.

Whatever works on an individual level is what you should do.

For me, the flying was also a great deal more rewarding. To take an aircraft sixteen hours, over the North Pole, and then descend over the Bay Area to land in San Francisco I found to be infinitely more rewarding than taking passengers from Gatwick to Alicante several times a week.

Horses, courses, and all that.

[hec7or]

Originally Posted by Maz11

Give me a single deep night flight rather than 5 days of 4 sectors starting at 5am any day of the week.

You can keep it, I prefer flying shorthaul in the UK and that's my choice. I have managed to teach my kids to drive, take them horse riding, to The Pony Club, yachting in the Solent, shooting, tap and ballet, stadium sports, concerts, Blockbusters in the West End, Shakespeare at Stratford upon Avon, helping with their Duke of Edinburgh's Awards, and at the same time managed to attend parents evenings and all the school Nativity plays and I've still managed to fly a full roster, albeit in a democratic (?) country with proper FTLs and therefore have had plenty of rest between flights in my own time zone. From what I read here, the downtime at an ME Longhaul Airline now extends to munching popular fusion dishes in a restaurant chain in an air conditioned mall with an overpriced chardonnay while Maria from the Philipines brings up your kids for you. There are umpteen posts in the ME forums about the fatigue and the long, long ULH nights.

P.s Don’t forget your tea bag, driver.

Love it, you should be writing sitcoms.

[paule737]

Spot on!

Been there, done that! Prefer to sleep in my own bed every night! Took a while to realise ☺️

[Emma Royds]

Talk about thread creep.....

[Maz11]

Originally Posted by hec7or

You can keep it, I prefer flying shorthaul in the UK and that's my choice.

It is indeed your choice, however basing all of your views of flying Longhaul in the ME on the rantings on here really isn’t representative of the whole truth.

Like I Love Twins I too was orange for over 12 years and have to agree that I never managed to adjust to the long term cumulative fatigue that brought. 4 sector max FDP days followed by minimum rest, followed by another 4 sector max FDP day, (repeat for 5 days), has left many in that field being told by their AME that they shouldn’t be full time anymore, but subsequently cannot afford (or can’t get) part time.

Of course people cope with different roster types differently, but unless you’ve operated both I really don’t think you’re qualified to discuss the differences.

Originally Posted by hec7or

proper FTLs and therefore have had plenty of rest between flights in my own time zone

And yet there were always plenty of complaints in my previous life of 11 hours in a crap hotel after a max FDP 3 sector day, to be followed the next day by another 3 sectors before you finally went home. 9 hours at work followed by 24 hours off in a nice hotel works much better for me having experienced both.

And the numerous occasions where people fell asleep driving home and went straight on when there was a round-about obviously proves that the FTLs in the EU are so robust.

Like you I managed to do all those things while working Low Cost too, but I found it a lot harder than I do here, where I still manage to do all those things.

Originally Posted by hec7or

while Maria from the Philipines brings up your kids for you

Please don’t tar us all with the same brush, me and my wife bring our kids up just fine thank you very much with no help, and she works (before you bring that up).

Yes there are multiple posts, but a 16 hour ULR where I spend 7 hours at the controls, sleep for 7, then come back to operate the descent and landing really isn’t that difficult if you manage to organise your rest correctly. There will always be fatigue in this industry, it’s one of our greatest threats, but I’ll take that ULR over a 2 crew MAN-SSH turnaround any day.

Back to the original topic, I hope everyone who is moving to pastures new through no fault of their own finds themselves back in the air (if that’s what they choose), as soon as possible. Every part of this industry needs some good news soon!