So let me get this right, you're a regional captain, working for one of the bottom regionals who has been hiring pilots with 200 hours. You're completely fatigued due to both the horrible schedules and the fact that you have to watch your FO like a hawk and constantly fix their mistakes and fill in for their huge gaps in knowledge and experience.

Now you're supposed to take a nap and while maintaining complete responsibility of the airplane and whatever bad happens, give sole operational control to this first officer? You wouldn't catch me sleeping in this situation even if I was allowed to. Many FOs at many regional airlines, the captains don't even trust enough to leave the cockpit for a 30 second run to the lav, much less a half hour long nap.

You wake up, the FO says "nothing changed. oh yeah and also they gave us this phone number to call, who knows why."

Yeah. Right.

 

Here's an idea...let's take a pilot COMPLETELY out of the loop...oh yea..he falls asleep for 15 minutes..what if the other one does too? Then we're at the same problem.

What if there's an emergency, and the newly awoken pilot now has to re-orient himself to an ever changing situation?

I'm sure the PF will be glad to give the PNF a full brief while he's trying to bring the airplane out of a dive because of rapid decompression.

 

The Canadians and Europeans have embraced the concept for certain flights without problem. I guess the question is, do you want people doing it in a controlled fashion or not ? Do you want them doing it in cruise under agreed conditions or suffering the consequences on an approach ?

Personally, I'm more interested to know when we can have a glass of wine with our evening in-flight meal like the French ?

Since many of us have to pay for and bring our own food, I've been determining the best wine to go with my Subway sandwiches. So far, a basic pinot grigio goes well with the turkey and a gentle syrah seems to compliment the black forest ham..................I'm still narrowing down my selection for the roast beef.

Do you think it would it be asking too much to ask for a shot of tequila with the chipotle chicken sandwich ?

 

Your pay will also be docked .4 for every 20min nap

On a different note Both Daimler Benz and PSA automotive group (Citroen/Peugeot) have designed snoozing detectors that follow and monitor eye movement. These systems warn the drivers by shaking the seats. I could see something similar being useful in a cockpit...

 

How many cruise emergencies are there compared to the number of incidents/accidents which are a result of fatigued crew members?

 

There are far too many cons for this. This is a piece of tape over a gaping wound that only sutures could fix.

 

ALPA has been proposing this....

 

I think the only possible con is the pilots who jumped at jobs at the XXXX airlines immediately caving on the number of legs and duty times in their contracts, requiring everyone else to follow suit or lose more flying to them because of cost.

 

Dont airlines allow pilots to leave the cockpit to have a bathroom break... and there your completely out of the loop... this would be similar except your in the cockpit just napping

 

and what would you propose?? its not helping the conversation by just saying 'no that wont work' add some insight and then people would take you seriously