Thread: Transcon Turns
View Single Post
Old 06-05-2005, 06:27 AM
  #20  
FNG320
Gets Weekends Off
 
Joined APC: Mar 2005
Position: A320 FO
Posts: 157
Default

Originally Posted by WatchThis!
Management will like the reduced manpower the waiver will create - works well for them.

Line holders will like having 18 days off per month and have the ability to rest in preparation for reduced rest pairings - works well for them too.

Reserves will pay with reduced margins of safety by not being able to properly rest for such pairings. Of course one or even two of these trips would be OK for most of us. The real danger comes from the prolonged and cumulative sleep debt of several months of reduced rest flying. That's where the JB reserve pilots will get hammered - and the entire operation see's a reduction in the margin of safety. Is it an accident waiting to happen? Who knows. Does it reduce the margin of safety? For reserve pilots - I think so.

Worth a disclaimer here - I'm not a JB pilot so take the above with a grain of salt.

Good luck with the program

Watch,

If this works out, there will be no reduction of pilots. Remember, we will still be flying the same number of hours, just in a smaller number of days. The company average will still be around 85 hours. This will mean the number of line holders will be the same.

The 18-22! days per month will be great if it all works out.

I don't think there will be a reduced margin of safety due to sleep debt. I expect there will be some minimum number of hours of rest between turns. I would expect something like 10-12 hours minimum. That gives good rest. Remember the "work day" will be the same or shorter than some of our long 4 leg/8 hour days running up and down the east coast with the great "productivity sits" in the middle.

As for reserves, remember with a reduced number of pilots flying per day, the number of reserves needed to replace this reduced number of line holders per day will should be reduced somewhat. What that means to me is that we can use these extra pilots to increase the total number of reserves and implement some improvements to the reserve system (long callout, late report, early release, etc). More reserves will allow this to actually happen and thus make reserve less painful, and maybe even desired by those who live in NYC or where based. All of this will reduce the demand on the reserves thus eliminating their fatique also. Remember, that reserves have limited windows where they can fill a "transcon turn" so they will only be options for such during their first few hours of a reserve period. After that, they would be illegal to fly a turn. So I don't think the reserves will be at risk.

Anyway, I guess we will all have to wait and see.

Just my opinion......

FNG
FNG320 is offline