Annual Leave in the Pilots Profession
 

Annual Leave, one would assume is to "recharge the batteries" and give a healthy balance to ones life. However, in my company taking 2 weeks offI get a ridiculous roster giving me a full hours schedule. So really all that is happening is I am working the same in a more condensed manner to get my days off in a row.

I believe many Airlines are like this. How many other professions are still asked to do their full months work in 2 weeks in order to get this leave??

I find it completely counterproductive to get a "break" only having to bust my balls when I get back.

End result, I'm knackered again and ready for more leave :ugh:

No one cares about your "batteries". When you are done and have no more energy, or are physically sick, they spit you out and bring in a new guy that's cheaper than you. That's airlines version 2013 for you.

Good luck!

I have not had a 2 week holiday in 13 years.

Can hardly complain comparing to those working 60 hour weeks in the city. Most of my friends who do this come back to a whole two weeks worth of work, they dont get replaced by anyone whilst they are away.

Yup - must agree, it doesn't feel fair to have to work your 90 hours in a condensed period in order to avoid crewing shortages, but the other guys are correct - everyone I know in similarly paying jobs come back to 2 weeks work, and spend half their holiday on their phone keeping up to date with what's going on in the office.

However, I think we all agree that flying is a special case thanks to the unique conditions and demand placed on staff, so I certainly hope people don't think they have it easy by comparison - everyone else gets Christmas, New Year's etc off!

Part time is a bit of a shafting too, if you're random roster I generally see companies offering more days off but still getting full time hours from part timers - surely it should be based upon an assumed days-per-week, hours-per-day calculation!

Then again, there are many 'should be's in this industry!!!!

Maybe in some Anglosaxon countries, where employment laws are virtually nonexistant ( third World employee conditions in the UK and USA) this is the case, but in civilised countries, holiday means holiday.
Get your priorities in order !
My wife is senior management for an International bank. Her company phone remains home during our vacation, company mail is NOT read. Same with all I know in similar positions.

In over 45 years of flying I never went less than six weeks' annual leave and never went more than 10 1/2 months without taking it. Most times I split it three weeks within every 6 or so months.
Sometimes when they got themselves short of aircrew through inadequate forward planning, a company would try to throw money at its crew to sell their leave back. Guys who fell for the money invariably burned out, had fatigue-related incidents, got sick, drank too much, sometimes divorced.

I have quit jobs when they would not give me leave, or tried to cancel it on short notice. And never regretted that decision. But I do acknowledge that we live in a far more dog eat dog world now, and demanding leave when due may result in losing one's job with problems finding another, better one.

No amount of money, pressure or career advancement is worth sacrificing our mental and physical health. Now, in semi-retirement, I just get by financially on what I make out of aviation. But I am healthy. In fact my main problem could be that I will outlive my savings and end up on the beach. At least it's a nice beach.

We had the same problems that pilots were rostered to do a full months work in the remaining time of a month if they had any vacation which kinda defeated the purpose of the vacation. We then negotiated a CLA that limited the block hours in any month with seven or more days vacation to 88 hours (95 hours in months without vacation) and each day of vacation substracts another 2,5 hours which at least kept it somewhat in check.

Normal preplanned vacation has to be taken in blocks of at least seven days length. Short term planned vacation is limited to 1 to 3 days and can be combined with the normal requestable four day off block per month. If planned cleverly that can mean up to 11 days off work with only three days of vacation spend.

It just sounds like you (20years) work for a bad company. Sorry... but I suppose that's life on the road...

Personally we get 6 weeks and the roster either side of the leave is similar to a month without.

Chin up

Flying is one of the very few jobs where when you are away from it, you truly can be away from it. You can't get a build up of flights when you get back and as long as the company stays within it's own FTL scheme, then you can't get "extra" flights rostered in before leave.

Almost every other job in the industry is different. Go away and the work builds up and when you get back from 2 weeks away, then you just have a 2 week backlog to deal with.

My suggestion is that this is one of those whinges that in reality is like a toddler stamping their feet and shouting "it's just not fair" when they only got 2 bowls of ice cream.
It's neither becoming to public perception of aircrew, nor in reality is it reasonable.

Simply put, your company rostered you perfectly legally to fly. So go and fly. If they asked you to do something illegal or unsafe, then by all means do something, but in this case, you have no grounds for moaning whatsoever.

I mean, the cheek of them, expecting you to fly whilst they pay you? How very dare they...

No wonder this profession gets worse every year with that point of view. You definitely have a future as a management pilot!

Say again slowly

I completely disagree with your views. There are safety issues at play here. Just because some lawyer says it's legal does NOT mean it's safe!

Many people have already lost their lives because of Pilot fatigue, and the pilots were 100% legal and following FTL's.

I think in general, the low cost airlines in Europe want you to work full time from March through to end of October, and then take your holiday. During my time at such a place, there was a constant war on the ability to take time off in the summer, resulting in a restriction to a week for the lucky few, and a reduction in days off during those months - down to 8 if I re-call. For the rest of the people in the business, no such restriction was applied. It would be possible to then be worked hard for the remaining days of the month. Of course you would be finishing late just before the day off, and return back on earlies. Your 7 days off is of course 7 days off. The working week off for those in the office is Mon-Fri. So their week off is 5 days, plus the weekends, so 9 days off in reality. There was some other rule (which I never understood), that if you had holiday, then your 8 days off was also reduced. Try telling that to office staff, that if they took their 2 weeks off, they had to work extra days when they came back! There was no union, so any changes were at the whim of the CEO with a very cowardly DFO to implement them (who didn't fly either!)

Gents, it's too late, I'm already in head office...

Now having said that, I have been on the wrong end of fatigue myself on numerous occasions, but please don't play the fatigue or safety card too often. When it's warranted, then shout it from the roof tops, but I've seen too many people try to stop any changes or even discussions about change on the basis of what is often a very tenuous association with safety or fatigue issues.

Senior management often roll their eyes at the mention of it and the battle is sometimes already lost. In this case, I'd call wolf on this being a fatigue issue.

This is just a whinge about rostering. If it was scheduled within the approved FTL scheme and there was an FRMS in place to monitor fatigue levels, then I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss the fact that someone is just having a moan without a lot of ground. One thing I know is that our lawyers have naff all say on what gets put in our FTL scheme!

If you are fatigued, then you know what to do. Call crewing and get someone else to fly in your place. If that is an issue in your organisation, then find somewhere else to work that isn't so awful.