Yet again, the testing was done for daytime, normal wake periods, NOT 11pm redeye turns. NORMAL AWAKE periods. Like for me living in EST 0600-2300 EST. The possible exemption would have wording spelling this out.

There is only so much money for the flight deck, add another pilot and divide the money three ways and it defeats the reason that some of the pilots like this idea: make more money in fewer days SAFELY without resorting to the mind-numbing day-rests followed by redeyes which are UNSAFE. Or even worse the multiple-leg redeyes, they really hurt.

When I flew as an IRO in a heavy crew, it was ridiculous: you cannot 'rest' sitting in a seat with the paying customers, and you cannot 'rest' sitting in the cockpit jumpseat. The 'IRO' deal is a joke from my experience, especially if we are talking about only an extra hour or two. It is an FAA 'exercise' to look like it is safer, in reality it is not. The ICAO-ruled flights were easy.

I understand the 'Pandora's Box' syndrom, but if our exemption [if it ever happens] spells out the specific time periods when it is valid, then if some other company wants to extend it further then that company is going to have to do the very expensive testing and documentation like we did. I don't see that happening.

I really think all of this moot, there are much more important issues in front of us right now for our management to spend the money and effort to go forward with this proposal.

BTW: RedeyeAV8r, thank you for the civil comments and discussion, it is refreshing to see this thread not turn into a name-calling JB-bashing thread.

B6Guy