Originally Posted by
SR22
When you are on-call you are not able to have a couple of beers, get too far away from base, etc. You must be fit and available to fly, though it sounds like your company is reasonable. How do you know when to sleep, though? Doesn't it suck getting up to go fly on 3 hours of sleep? BTW, it is also the company's responsibility not to assign you to a flight if you are fatigued.
You can use the link below to search for other interpretations. I only have the Word/PDF files. They all say the same thing, more or less.
http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/...terpretations/
Having a couple beers is over rated, but no if I want to be available I can't have a beer since then I would not be able to fly. But if I want to have a beer I can call in and say I'm going to be unavailable. Same thing if I need to go somewhere, or do something that's involved. I just call in and let them know I'm unavailable. The down side to that is that by calling in unavailable you may miss a big trip that pays really well. But I've even turned a couple of those down because I had other plans.
As far as sleeping, I just sleep when I would normally sleep. I go to bed around 10pm, wake up when ever I wake up, and take a nap in the afternoon. Flying on three hours sleep really isn't bad at all once you get up and get out of the shower. The key thing about working on call is knowing your limits and staying within them. And if I worked at an employer that gave me a problem about refusing to fly because I was tired, that plane would sit right where it was and I'd be on the first buss home! I won't work for a company that doesn't respect my decisions and safety. Personally I feel that I'm better off where I'm at after hearing about how some of these scheduled carriers basically force you to fly if you answer the phone or if your even sick! No thanks! Being on call may suck, but it's as safe as you make it.