International QOL
 

How is your quality of life if you fly international routes? About how many days are you away from home every month? Also how senior are the aircraft / routes?

Which company?
Further, international routes vary greatly. European trips vs Asian trips vs Pacific trips vs South America trips.

Most pilots at legacies are away from home for 3-5 days at a time on these trips. They usually run senior. They are usually accompanied with lots of time off.
However, all of this can be not true as well.

I know a few United 777 guys, just ran into him last week and he was doing Houston-RIO 2 leg 4 day, late start day 1 and early finish on last day... close to 25hrs of pay for that 1 trip and i think 20hr layover in Rio

A few years ago when I worked for a Delta Connection Carrier I looked at the 747 or 777 pairings to through NRT (I can't remember which) and they were 7-9 days long. Looked like DTW-NRT, then from NRT doing out and backs to MNL, BKK, and SIN, not all in the same pairing though. Not bad though since you do one pairing like that and your done for the month.

I recently ran into a United 777 CA in Japan, said he was doing a 6 day that was doing (something like) IAH-NRT-GUM-HNL-IAH, IIRC he had a 40 hr overnight in HNL. I'm not sure what the actual credit was. Also not bad.

The ACMI guys/girls are gone more. I have friends spread out at most of them. Then seem to be gone from 13-18 days consecutive each month depending upon the pairing they bid. Of course, seniority is everything. The catch is due to the nature of that side of the business they're schedule isn't really set in stone. So they may start a pairing with a DHD to Asia, but then get reassigned to do a RIO or GRU turn from Miami. Nature of the business.

The Legacies seem to get a better deal IMO.

I'm not even a year at United on the B756 fleet in EWR. All the trips to Europe I have flown are 3 day trips with late start and mid day finishes. There are some 4-6 day trips as well that are common. Usually 23-26 hour layover's are the norm for Europe. South America is a few hours more. If you have a line then 4 trips a month is about normal. On RSV it's all luck. The few days on RSV that I haven't flown, I have been lucky and sat long call from home. I'm usually in my own bed 16 or so nights a month on RSV. I consider the flying much more relaxing and enjoyable compared to the multi leg days in and out of terrible cities that I dealt with for 10 years at the regionals. I don't feel really any lingering jet lag issues either when I get home. I try to eat well and excersize as much as possible. That might be what's helping me with mitigating fatigue early on. Time will tell how my body holds up.

Jetlag is pretty easy to mitigate on a three day, two flight trip IMO.

That is what I am learning. I know some guys hit the road right away when we get to the hotel and are out all day without and nap. They tend to be the ones I hear on the flight home being worn out because they went to sleep at 8PM and then woke up wide awake at 3AM. I still need to force my body to sleep during crew rest. I'm lucky if I get 30 minutes of broken sleep on a 2 hour break. Hopefully that is a new guy thing.

The older you are the harder it is.

Did you move to base or commute? Once your seniority can hold it are going to try and bid 737 or A320 for the better schedules?

"Eat when you're tired, sleep when you're hungry".

A tip I heard that occasionally worked for me is get to hotel, take a hot shower, go to bed right away. But not longer than 4 hours or so. Doenst always work, just depends.

And it may be suited to longer/Asia type flying and not Europe/SA.