Guys, be careful of what you wish for, our productivity would GO WAY DOWN, and we would have less days off............

you know if this happened to an commercial aircraft they would just label it 'pilot error' and move on.

While I agree with you to an extent SAAB, I must say that small improvments could go a long way.

First, I feel that reduced-rest overnights should be a contingancy rather than a plan. If an airline needs to reduce a crew's rest to operate on-schedule due to delays, so be it, but it shouldn't be planned upon and built into schedules.

Second, we should never be compelled to extend duty to 16 hours. I believe NWA's contract allows duty to be extended to 16 hrs at the pilot's descression but it is not required. If this were FAR, airlines could keep on schedule in weather without risking fatigue. If all I have done is a couple of legs and got a good La-z-boy nap in, I'll fly into the 15th or 16th hour to get to the overnight. However if I have been sitting unblocked at the gate waiting for De-icing at ORD for 6 hours and they want me to pull a turn past 14hrs, forget it. It would be nice to have the option to fatigue past 14 without loosing money.

Just a few thoughts

Got a location on that lazy-boy?

But they're still allowed to text message??? Our company just had a memo come out saying we're not allowed to read newspapers in the cockpit.

Please tell me that's only during sterile cockpit?

Not even close Saab.

You don't need to be able to work a 16 hour duty day to get a productive work shift done.

oh yea, tell that to the people who create the pairings. SWA runs there operation differently then any other airline out there, especially at the regional level. There is no way our days off would not be affected if they increased our rest. I am all for safety however days off and line values would plummet, believe me its been looked at before and the extra rest isnt worth it to most people who are polled

PS I am not saying your wrong I am just saying the examples I have seen tell me differently

If you ask me I think we should get paid hourly from the time we show up until the time we clock out. LIKE MOST NORMAL HOURLY PAID WORKERS! If that were to happen maybe you would see shorter more productive days, but the airlines would have a fit since right now they can screw us for 16 hours or whatever your contract says and only pay us flight time. They get us for free hell if I owned the company I would abuse us too, why pay someone when you can get them to work for free?

Well, Personally I think that not only is a 12 hour duty limitation invaluable, but is entirely feasible. I just did a quick examination of our lines this month, and out of the entire month only 1 pairing on 1 day was scheduled longer than 12 hours (excluding a few ready reserve schedules and stand-ups). This, by the way, is at Colgan (yes, COLGAN!) out of EWR. In fact, most of our scheduled days are less than 10 hours. If Colgan can do this, than I think others can as well. This would also have the added benefit of reducing stand-ups across the board.

I understand that this is only scheduled time, but if we can build lines to about 10 hours, extendable to say 12 or 14, it would greatly reduce the amount of fatigue from long days.