Originally Posted by rickair7777

Mesa schedules to the max allowable by the FAR's...unfortunately no common sense is specified in the FAR's. Mesa standups do not always allow for sleep during the day because they do not always keep you on the same cycle...

You need 8 hours of rest, right? OK, so get up at 0600, fly a couple legs in the morning, get to LAS around noon. Now take an 8-9 hour break, go back to the airport and fly an all-nighter. Did you get your legal "rest"? Yup. Did you really sleep much during the afternoon? Probably not, because you started that day on the front, not the back of the clock. Also, the hotel hosts wedding receptions outside your room.

Night shift flying is largely impractical at the regional airlines. Most (but not all) industries that use a night shift staff it with folks who prefer that shift or at least stay on it for an extended period of time so they get acclimated.

Very few pilots prefer living their life on the backside, so they fly their shifts, and then immediately return to the front-side. When they go back to work, they are out of sync again... Most pilots view night flying as a temporary hardship that will be remedied by seniority, so they gut it out but never really adapt. This is a safety problem, as well as a QOL issue.

There is also a big difference between one long leg and 4-5 short ones. From personal experience, a long leg is better. You are alert when you show up, you get the bird airborne and then the fatigue hits you enroute. That's OK, you can be less alert enroute as long as you can wake up for 20-30 minutes to do the approach, landing, and taxi. Going up and down all night is brutal...