Every leg both CA's and FO's sign a paper saying they are fit for duty. If you are not, or believe you can not complete the entire flight safely, don't do it, it actually is that simple. Some people just like to make it more complicated.

I would also likely have a difficult time completing the DEN-ONT-MCO. If I felt like I'd be fatigued, I'd call out, if I did not, I'd work it.

I don't think a big stink needs to be made, if enough pilots call out fatigued for it, it will change. Also it should go without saying, but FOs should not feel pressured to operate a flight if they feel fatigued just because the CA isn't going to call out.

 

I’ve had to do that as an FO. As a captain I’ll do it and take the FO off the hook if we’re both smoked.

 

Well I guess calling in fatigued in ONT kind of is making a big stink. But I totally agree with what you said. My point just being, raise a flag to the company that it's a dangerous pairing.

 

What about the good old days of the DEN-PHL red-eye, waiting one hour for the van, then that same night, operating the PHL-SJU red-eye, followed by a 3 hour sit, SJU-MCO with a 35 minute van ride to the La Quinta while the sun was brightly shining, just to fly the late MCO-DEN?! All the while, doing it with one of DEN's infamous "no-fly" CA's. I went from snowflake to boomer in a month.

 

I remember it well.

 

the fatigue calls in SJU ended that

 

System wide pairing schedule stats for April:
1 day pairing average: 20.5% (LAS highest at 32%,ORD lowest at 6%)
2 day pairing average: 46% (MCO highest at 70%, DEN lowest at 15%)
3 day pairing average: 36.4% (DEN highest at 66%, MCO lowest at 12%)
4 day pairing average: .03% (DEN is the only base with 4 days, at .2% of pairings)
Note: This won't add to 100% based on rounding.

System wide pairing schedule stats for May:
1 day pairing average: 37% (LAS highest at 57%, ORD lowest at 16%)
2 day pairing average: 39.5% (MCO highest at 51%, LAS lowest at 31%)
3 day pairing average: 22.6% (ORD highest at 39%, LAS lowest at 11.4%)
4 day pairing average: .08% (ORD highest at .4%, DEN lowest with .1%, no other 4 day pairings in any other bases)
Note: This won't add to 100% based on rounding.

I hope this information helps anyone who is interviewing or plans on it. By numbers alone, some bases are clearly live in domiciles while some have the potential for more commuting. IMO the reason ORD seems more "commutable" is because they are gate space limited, so the planes don't return to ORD as regularly. DEN on the other hand is the center of our network still.

 

this information is absolute gold! thanks for researching and sharing

 

And people wonder why I left a cargo company!

No dollar/hour makes up for the damage you do to your body by doing that 30+ years!!! Unless you’re a hooker that just cares about the money and not about value of your family life or overall health....but to each - their own

 

Has Frontier tried to go to only day turns in the past? How do you commuters make this work?