Originally Posted by
tsquare
Apples and oranges. A 2 hour flight followed by 4 hours behind the door, followed by another 2 hour flight completely on the backside of the clock is different. A Europe trip has you landing at 3am or so body clock. That is vastly different than landing at 6am. A better analogy would be the allnighters from the west coast which I have also stated are extremely undesirable... You wanna look 70 when you are 55?
A day one redeye at leasts gives the pilot time to adjust his schedule to get sufficient rest. I used to do the redeyes all the time - I did adjust my body clock (no kids at home) to go to sleep @ 3 AM PST and we generally got to the hotel @ 7 AM EST so I was only a couple of hours late to bed. On day 3 (after 30 hour layover) we were back to LAX by 9 PM PST and I was home by midnight ready to get back in bed @ 3 AM PST. I much preferred the one year when I was senior because they were still manning LAX and had 4 day (all day flying) trips that paid 22-24 hours and I only worked 3 trips (12 days) a month. That meant being on a different sleep schedule because I had to be up by 5:30 AM to make my commute in on Day 1. CDOs do not offer any flexibility to the pilot.