Originally Posted by
waterskisabersw
One quick thing: a lot of people have mentioned days off/work harder but on fewer days/etc.
That's definitely true, but with the inefficiencies these days I've noticed that it's taking md more and more time to recover after every trip. It's all well and good to have 17-18 days off vs. 14-15 days off, because those extra few can't be discounted, but when you're so dog tired after every single trip of 12+ hour duty days and 11 hour overnights, it really does start to affect your days at home.
Your first day back after a pm where you get in at 3am every day, or that last day before going to work to wake up every day at 3am, severely impacts your time at home. If you have kids, it's hard to get back on their schedule when you have to keep your circadian rhythm at least somewhat close to your work schedule so that you don't work yourself into an early grave. As an am guy, I used to bounce back after getting home around 2pm on day 3 by the next morning. Because our ams are getting back close to 5-7pm now, my first day back is now the next day, for which I am generally wrecked. And my last day off, I have to be in bed by 6 to try to get to sleep by 7 for my 3am wakeup call on day 1, which definitely puts a damper on family time after school that day.
A 3 day still isn't quite as bad as a 4 day, but it's also not what it used to be. I definitely wouldn't say it's cut and dry that the 2-3 extra days at home that you get at swa are black and white 2-3 extra days at home. I do wonder just how much better our system is over the 4 day 4 leg trips they have at the big 3. I could get all my YouTube and TV watching out of my system on my overnights rather than getting distracted by that stuff at home. Maybe that's just the entitled millennial in me.
I can’t emphasize enough what a big deal this is in my experience. I am t-i-i-i-red (said with emphasis and with two syllables) after just about any trip I fly at SWA. And the being tired thing seems, for me, to function on somewhat of a Richter Scale of fatigue - a 4-day at SWA is around about twice as fatiguing as a SWA three-day, a SWA three-day is twice as fatiguing as a SWA two-day, and a SWA two-day is twice as fatiguing as a SWA turn. And most of the turns I fly are pretty fatiguing.
So, like waterski explained, when I get back from a trip, especially if it was a three-day or longer, I’m walking around like a zombie for at least the first day of my days off. Often, that period stretches into the second day off after a trip. Ergo, for me, it’s not like all of my days off are quality days off. About one-third to one-half of my days off are kinda like cotton candy in terms of nutritional value.
I’m senior and live in base, about 25 minutes from the airport. Maybe my tiredness is a function of getting older because some of the guys here on APC say their trips aren’t fatiguing at all, they haven’t flown more than a nine-hour duty day in months, and all of their overnights are at least 19 hours long.
They seem to live in a sort of Lake Wobegon, alternate reality version of SWA (
where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average…).
In the parallel universe iteration of SWA that I inhabit, most days are four legs, the overwhelming majority of duty days exceed ten hours, and overnights typically hover around 13 hours or less. That’s my reality.
YMMV.