A Cabin manager once said to me "but if we put in a fatigue report it will show that we can't cope" EXACTLY !!

Is it still the case the CA's can work longer hours than Pilots? That's aways been daft for the 'crew concept'. Either way, I have known of numerous occasions in various airlines where CA's have not been promoted because of sickness rates. Not with pilots, but why should CA's be pressurised & victimised with such a policy?

Yep, fair point. In that case, it is a job for their Company Council to ask for crew food to be improved - but industrial action might be required to acheive this.

@RAT 5: Our cabin crew have a terrible union. Also, many cabin crew, (in my experience, including the one I quoted), seem to have a 'nurses' mentality, in that they continue to work under the most ridiculous Ts & Cs and low pay, but not make a fuss about it.

Good luck at EasyJet folks, hope you manage to gain some ground.

EasyJet pilots vote ?overwhelmingly? to strike, sparking 11th hour deal from airline

I wonder what the 11th hour deal is? And it's not really 11th hour if the strike is not due to take place until October half term.

The media decided the date was half term. I don't recall the union saying so.
Pretty sure it's not a deal either - just an improved offer.

What the SLF need is aircrew that are not exhausted. As SLF I would actively turn away from any airline where there is a group movement of staff who are saying that they are often too tired to be safe.

As pax on a low cost airline that flies from Stansted I was shocked to see the Captain at the end of the flight which had been delayed an hour or so, couldn't get steps, one reason or another....he looked absolutely shattered and worn out. We don't need this.

Talking to my doctor & physiotherapist they always said it's not necessarily the length of time you work it's how you work and how that time balanced between work focused time and self-focused time plus exercise. The worst thing you could do is stay immobile totally work focused. Guess what pilots do.
Imagine sitting at your desk for 10 hours looking out of the window on floor 30, looking at your computer screen and doing some work, answering the telephone a few times, chatting to your neighbouring desk, back to the screen monitoring that your previous work was taking effect - adjusting as necessary, accepting a cuppa delivered by your secretary, taking a pee break every 2 hours and a 5 minute stroll round the office before back to the seat and screen again, making more work related entries to react to previous work, a few stolen minutes with the newspaper or internet.
Now do that for 5 days starting at 06.00 or 5 days until 23.00 including weekends. So little exercise, very static. No balance. Your overall fitness would suffer; so why shouldn't ours? Very unhealthy according to my doctor & physiotherapist, yet supposedly the medical profession say it's OK for pilots, or at least that's what EASA muppets tell us. If an office worker went to the company doctor with fatigue and a sore lower back I'm sure they would be advised to change their working life style and mover about more: hence the 'break' every 2.30hr and lunch break for office workers. Health.

If these crews are so damned fatigued, i.e., have cumulative lack of rest over months or years. I for one support them in their endeavours.

Passengers want cheap seats, and I get that, but how far down must the industry descend in driving down costs where pilots, and cabin crew are exhausted, typically, at the end of a run of 6 days/nights work…. Then a combination of problems present themselves, and add to that they might not have plenty of 'thinking time' fuel left, and the weather is marginal at destination and alternates… All damned legal, but far from best practice.

Good luck EZY pilots, I genuinely wish you a good, and safe outcome.

RAT5 - also what is often forgotten by those on the ground making ftl decisions for those in the air is that those in the air are working their bodies quite hard too. You are breathing at 7 to 8 thousand ft. The air is very dry so you dehydrate but drink more than you would on the ground. So body thinks on the outside we have a drought but on the inside a flood.
The air quality is well disgusting just look at any temp sensing filter in the cockpit they are blocked with shed skin. I could go on about radiation & organo phosphates & glare but the jury is still out on those.

It's really rather ironic how many airline pilots would rather spend there time off, on a sail boat.

No, not a 40M yacht with a crew on board [they own the flipping airlines], but a slow, wind driven relaxed tub on the south coast doing 4Kts…

Funnily enough, where the relative humidity is closer to 90+%.. Not 20% or less, where many of us spend a lot of time.

I like to spend time on my boat - it's relaxing. Work isn't.

Gypsy Moth Dan?

Seriously, the changes regarding earlies seems a retrograde step from what friends of mine who fly short haul. I assume this has added to fatigue levels at Easy and elsewhere.

What have Easy offered today to mitigate fatigue issues?

Nothing,the members won't buy the latest fudge.not a chance.

When I worked there, I also suffered fatigue. I visited my GP, wondering if I had some mild but persistent bug, dietary problem,etc, but she saw nothing wrong. She asked to see my roster and her eyes popped out on stalks. She wanted to sign me off for three months on the spot. I said I'd do three weeks off and then come back to her, so as to avoid the licence and medical being suspended by the CAA. I called in to crewing, citing fatigue. They said they'd put me down as sick. It started an argument that ended in me threatening them with legal action against them personally for libel and fraud if they marked it as anything but fatigue, and that I would be checking.

Half an hour later, I got a phone call form the then new Flt Safety guy who had recently been appointed as part of the Go merger. He was really pleased - the CAA had been following a large number of rosters with fatigue concerns, and unbeknownst to me, mine was one of them. So, that constituted an MOR. Chief Pilot war pretty angry when I cam back, but by that point I had resigned.

Fatigue has been a long term issue in EZY, as have anti-pilot managers. But that is not specific to Ezy - it's endemic to the industry.

My recommendation is that if you feel fatigued, make an MOR, and don't do it through the company Flt Safety office as they may rewrite it or just bin it- it has been known to happen. You'll certainly get a lot of political pressure. Just write it straight to the authority. If the CAA want the evidence, then give it to them directly. And take the time off, citing fatigue in writing. If they are happy to kill you, you owe them no loyalty or "extra effort". All that being "orange" bs only goes one way.

My friend is a Captain with them. He has already had sick leave due to chronic fatigue. He spoke to me a year ago, stating he was really struggling with the roster. He had been on a round of earlys, the worst for him, and was getting to the stage of looking to leave. It is the individuals choice of course. Leave.....the crystal clear point however, is that it should not be this way. The airline appears to be well run, the flights appear to be run at near capacity, the schedules fit with public demand. So why is it deemed necessary, desirable, to flog every last inch out of the crew with rosters that induce these problems. No one wants strikes, least the crews themselves, so hopefully sense will prevail.

They have always had a slick public image because their PR department know their job and play along whenever the media want a sound bite from an unrelated company. But it is a turgid smokescreen. I always thought they were like New Labour - all PR and spin, but directionless and corrupt internally. They even came to being the same year.

Never a truer word.
For some reason those on the ground believe those that fly (pilots & cabin crew) are no longer human. "Just whinging over paid pain in the a***s"

Well a strike, a well publicised one, should bring a lot of that internal strife to the surface. Here was me thinking it was the other lot that were the baddies.......

maxred

Can't speak specifically for Easyjet but in general the airlines (all of them) want minimum crew headcount, so they want every crewmember working to their maximum legal limit - anything less is seen as inefficient by the accountants. If questioned on how hard they are working people they use the fact that they are rostering in compliance with FTL rules (regardless of how daft/onerous those rules are) as evidence that they are producing safe rosters.