Originally Posted by
Hotel Kilo
For fun I happened to go look back at my old logbooks (yes, I used to keep logbooks, you always had to be prepared) from my -88 days. This was before the explosion of RJ flying, so take that into consideration. Mostly 4 day trips. typical pattern 4-3-4-3 or 4-4-4-3 (that's legs per day). There was no 117 back then. Looking back on those trips, hard to believe we actually operated like that. Seems to be drifting back to that on the NB side.
So, NB folks, what exactly is going on with rotations? I don't really look at your bid packs so I'm ignorant. Is the biggest gripe that duty periods are long (pushing max duty day and/or block limits) followed by short rests (we all know that a 11.5 hour overnight turns into a min rest overnight pretty quick in today's operation).
CBreezy gave you the solution - call out fatigued. It's as simple as that.
It's a tool we've been given as professional pilots. If you're beat, make the call. Full stop. The rotation construction won't improve until we put the breaks on it. You won't be called over excessive fatigue calls. If the rotation is fatiguing you - make the call. If, God forbid, something happened to you out there, they are going to peel you back and ask you about your fitness for duty. And guess what - that's solely on YOU. They will not blame the company for the rotation you decided to fly to the end fatigued. The rules give us this self determination. Use it.
Lol, I'm a logbook nerd as well and took a look back at my newhire days. When I was hired on the 737, I rarely flew more than two leg days. A vast majority of my days were one and two leg/days, with the very occasional three or four leg days, but those mostly started circa 2016/2017, when they started adding turns to the front and/or back of trips. I never even made to 50% in seat and I flew plenty of 4-leg/4-days and 2-leg/2-days. I even have a bid packet 3-leg/4-day in here. Looking at the times, my overnights were generally longer back then as well.
Either way, it got better from your days on the 88, so going back to that is a step backward. But the bigger factor is that with the rest rules today, these trips often have zero flex, so a rain cloud in ATL and NYC, wreaks havoc on the operation.