Originally Posted by
Copperhed51
True, however after a long day of flying with not enough time to grab a meal, we usually have the taxi/shuttle driver stop off somewhere so we can grab something to go. That eats into my rest. Lately I've been going all day without eating because there's no time and the airports we go to don't have any food to buy. I am always starving and looking forward to my meal after I finish flying. I've been packing pop tarts and other snacks too since that's all I really have time to eat during the day.
You're kidding, right? You go all day without eating? Take a dang meal break!!! Physiological needs are JUST as important as making sure you're well trained. If you're hungry, tired, overly stressed, drunk, or have other problems which prohibit you from putting 100% of your skills towards flying the aircraft, you need to stop and take a break. These airlines don't pay us enough to take risks like that! If the company feels too many flights are being delayed because of crews taking breaks to eat, they'll change the schedule. When I was at Skywest, they started supplying us with "snack boxes" from catering which helped. We could always pull the "take a break" card, though, and eat real food if we needed to. They can't fire you because you took a delay to eat something!!