I never said fatigued and sick were the same thing. I was countering the argument that its practical just to "adjust" your schedule with sick usage whenever the schedule becomes burdensome.

Not to drift, but two points on fatigue: I have filed many ASAPS because we are not able to 'predict' fatigue in the FAA or the company's eyes. I have stated that although I may be prepared to fly a midnight redeye after flying all morning from a previous unscheduled redeye, I am not sharp many hours later. The problem with aggressive reserve scheduling is that pairing construction and other areas where fatigue is considered do not assist a reserve who is shuffled from day trip to night or double dutied and rolled.

The second point is that our union has made specific statements and agreed on by flight ops that a sick call can be used instead of a fatigue call. The sick call guarantees that the pilot will be paid. It would also be prudent to file an ASAP when one calls in sick for fatigue reasons. You can argue that calling in sick and not fatigued does not bring the problem to light. But the ASAP is also seen by the FAA and monitored by the fatigue and pairing construction overseers.

My earlier post simply discussed the heavy workload and was not specifically fatigue related. I, of course, agree that there is no excuse for flying fatigued. The problem comes that we should not be forced into fatiguing schedules by abusive crew schedulers that use operational necessity as the way to run an airline, and have done so for a decade. It forces me to use sick bank or a fatigue call with CPO interrogation to cover flying that should never have been assigned in the first place. I refuse to lose pay because some random cubicle pilot can make the square peg go into the round hole.