Originally Posted by
CVG767A
I do a lot of JFK-TLV (23:35 round trip), and I prefer to do two shorter breaks, rather than one long one. I've tried several different ways of doing the breaks, and think that two different sized breaks work best for me. (I have yet to insist that we do it my way, though. I always go with the what the crew consensus is--as do most guys, I think).
One other way we occasionally did it on the ATL-NRT trip (particularly the return leg which was always more fatiguing due to diurnal cycle) was to split the cockpit in two. Captains handle their own swap; F/Os the same. And the first guy on break could break for anything between 2-6 hours, depending on how both were doing. IOW, if the guy on break was able to keep sleeping, and the guy in the cockpit felt OK, they just let the first guy sleep. But as another guy said, after about 3 hours, it seemed that both were generally ready for a swap.
PG