"8 hours behind the door" should really only be used in reference to a minimum contractual break in duty prior to a DH only duty period in my opinion. If you have an FDP and are flying after the break in duty, 8 hours behind the door isn't going to cut it.

If we really cared about fitness for duty, we’d be fighting for quarterly (or longer) shift-based bids, so that you’d fly the same time of day for months at a time. But pilots don’t actually care about fitness for duty or safety above all. We care about commutability, late shows and early releases to maximize time off, etc.

Everyone on both sides is being disingenuous about safety, giving only lip service to safety as a veil to get what they really want.

Absolutely. That would destroy rotation construction flexibility for the company too though, so it will never happen. The funny thing about 117 is that it is loosely based on circadian and sleep "science", but doesn't come close to recognizing how long it actually takes to fully and completely shift one's circadian cycle. If it did, we'd really have a "pilot shortage" and the public would be begging for unlimited foreigner pilot visas and cabotage and ME3 and FoC scam airlines would be on every route in the country.

How would that work for international trips?

Obviously there is no possible way to stay completely within one's circadian cycle doing international. That's why its augmented to mitigate that inevitable concern.

Circadian flipping domestic, however, is done for flexibility, staffing and cost and yes to some extent flight crew demand. 117 (unaugmented domestic) does not adequately protect that from a human physiology point of view. That freight train is long, heavy, fast and the amount of track required to stop and turn it around goes far past the horizon.

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Ok. Thanks!

Not all international is augmented.

The vast majority is though, and the portion that isn't is still 1 leg to a longer rest. I would agree that the envelope is pushed a bit too far (by all airlines) in that regard. BOS-DBN should be the limit IMO but we go to work with the contract we have and unless the rules are changed for everyone then we'll have to compete with others who do it unaugmented anyway.