Originally Posted by
DelDah Capt
It's certainly not a lot of beauty sleep, and I need all the beauty I can get.
I'm assuming a few things in order to get my thumbs up....they would have to be stand-alone (i.e not as part of a 4 day trip). I'm assuming one leg in and one leg out (then you do the hokey-pokey and turn yourself about). You'd have to be very selective with the hotels for quick access, as well (I'm thinking like DTW Westin)
...as everyone has said, the details are important to see before I'd give a YES, but I'm not willing to declare Split Duty unsafe when we do so many other types of 'wee hour' flying safely. Because we have several posters here who seem to flip-flop on the safety issue with the following reasoning :
A) Split Duty Ops that infringe on WOCL are completely and utterly unsafe.
B) International flying that infringes on the WOCL is safe because
.1 We've always done it
.2 Marketing needs it
.3 ER pilots will be more responsible than narrowbody pilots and get more sleep.
Here's my thing and this is where I know I am on the outside. I'd rather take off at 2300, land at 0100 takeoff at 0137 (717 turn time) and land at 0337 and go home. It's kind of like a 5 leg day with a 2:30 hour sit, that is a killer. Let me just keep going.
But I am a night owl and seriously work off 6 hours of sleep per night. Eventually that will change but with two little kids if I can get 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep it's like 10 hours of sleep was when I was in college.
The worst part of an IROPS night in my experience is trying to leave the airport. I did a MDT once and we landed at 3am. The hotel said sorry we sent our van driver home at midnight so you need to get a cab. Well yeah us and 149 other people were waiting for a cab. So we got the hotel to get us one... whole ball of wax there... got to the hotel at 5am and then went into a now 20 something hour layover.
Just to me leaving the airport to take a nap followed by returning and going through TSA and doing that whole thing would be a pain. I'd rather sleep in the airplane and get a solid 6 hours of sleep.
Now I can feel the tomatoes being thrown in my direction more so then when I poke my head into an Alaska thread about Juno. But i'm just saying what I see as less fatiguing, now what is good policy. I'm just thinking that leaving the airport and returning on a CDO is going to be a PITA on the backside of the clock.
Thus, I don't think that 6 hours is a good idea and therefore will say CDOs are not a good idea.
It's just me and I don't speak for.... my guess is hardly anyone.
