Thedude

Really depends on who you work for and what contract you are on.
For me it has ranged from 16 hrs to 3+ days.

I was loving my 8-9 hrs flight and 48-72 hr layovers in PVG but it eventually came to an end.

Thedude

Alot more widebody freighters move during the day than you would expect.

gloopy

Most pax operations are 24-ish hour layovers as the most common. Of course there are others. 48 hours doesn't exactly make it easier on the body either. It takes a while to flip your circadian cycle, and a while to switch it back. Maybe you can do that on those ultra rare 6 day layovers, but those are typically only a tiny percentage of any bid pack in pax or cargo.

It can be great flying. Everyone should try it, especially if it affords them the opportunity to see places they haven't and wouldn't otherwise. But its really hard to do for a substantial part of one's career without serious health consequences. Sleep is a third of your life and its just not physiologically possible to double flip every few days or week. You can do it for a while, but it will catch up to most people and catch up hard. I guess its like smoking or eating pounds of lard every day. Yeah we all know someone's uncle that lived to be 120 while smoking 4 packs a day blah blah blah. But for every isolated example of that there are battalions of people whose life was ended prematurely and usually in a pretty flagrant way because of it.

The good international is one of the best schedules on paper there is though. On paper. Its that pesky human physiology that's the problem. Its always there, and it always wins.

LivingTheDream

When it comes to cockpits... size matters. At 6ft tall, after 2yrs on the 737, I wanted to shoot myself... can't imagine sitting in that torture chamber for 30+ years... same with the muddy dog.

Now a domestic 757 or 320... bring it!