Originally Posted by
404yxl
You don't need any sleep to do a deadhead. A deadhead is a non-functioning task. You just sit there. Are you saying if you blocked into a west cost city at 10pm you would wait until the next morning to leave or hop on the midnight redeye home? Some pilots may choose the hotel while others will bail. Either way you are not a danger sitting fatigued in a passenger seat.
The beauty is if they give you less than 10 hours of rest, they can't touch you until after your DH blocks in + at least 10 hours of rest. If you got 10 hours of rest before the DH then, they can assign flying to you. Pick your poison.
You're right. No sleep needed to perform DH. Just another unhealthy loss of sleep that makes me feel like crap down the road. No biggy. I'll sleep when I'm dead, which may be sooner rather than later with the *******y work rules permeating the industry.
There are times I would choose the hotel and there are times I would deviate from DH as in your example. Bear in mind, there are markets where the earlier DH deviation is not an option. So now I'm stuck with another company mandated crappy rest period. I want the option to choose for myself whether I am well rested or not.
Your example of assigned flying applies primarily to IROPS, which are not the norm, and reserves which is also a small percentage. But the scheduled 9 hour layover is becoming more prevalent in bid packages. It is a way of squeezing more productivity out of us at a cost of long term health...an argument could be extended to the 10 hour layovers as well IMO.