Dam, your so young, and new at this, you probably don't have bags under your eyes (yet) ??

Cargo pilots don't need Part 117 rest rules ...

Fantastic Tech Is Making Pilot Fatigue Even More Perplexing | WIRED

Last I knew, (so YES it may be different now), the pax airlines fly to an international destination from the US, layover, then return to the US. Most likely the same country a few times a month.

Different from our system a flight continues "around the world" with different crews every 6-12 hours. Different layover countries. The crews then layover for 24 hours waiting for the same flight the next day ... this is a simplistic example. I didn't even want to get into the whole "guest" FO lines.

But the point is, the cargo system is very different from pax and creates different schedules.

Anyone with experience in both care to elaborate ?

Decade-old necropost...solid

But thats the beauty of the internet. Bury something, let it rot for awhile, dig it up, roll it over, and have your way with it years later.

This.

Amazon has spoken. There will be a 'job', it will just pay a whole lot less.

Sure.

International is essentially the same for both cargo and passengers, except that I've found cargo has longer layovers and the trips are longer in duration. Cargo trips seem to be around the world type trips, or half-way around and back. The passenger company had 2/3-day out and backs with 20-ish hour layovers. I did not like those at all. In my opinion, the FedEx RFO trips are the best kept secret assuming you can hold them. 3-4 days in Paris, sure. 3-4 days in Cologne or Mainz, Germany, only if you twist my arm.

At FedEx, there is a good amount of day flying, but domestically the night flying dominates. To fly days you will need to be senior. There's typically two types of day flying. You can have "AM Out-n-backs" which start at 2-4AM in the morning, fly out to a destination, then return to the hub before or around noon. Or you can have a 2-3PM takeoff to destination, return back to the hub around 10-midnight or layover and return in the morning by noon.

At FedEx when flying night schedules, I've found that as long as I can try to get to sleep before sun up, and sleep 8-9 hours and get a good work out in, I feel great. Just like another said, if I only get a few hours of sleep I feel groggy all day.

When I flew passengers, the hardest flying for me were the early departure flights (5AMs 6AMs) when FedEx is typically landing and going to the hotel. Depending on where you lived and how far your drive to work was, you could be getting up at 2AM to get to work. Then like typical pax flying, you flew 3, 4, or maybe 5 legs with a long duty day. Those days to me were killers. I'm not sure how FAR117 might have changed this.

Moral of the story, there's good flying at both, if senior. There's more variety and day flying at passenger airlines. But I believe the passenger flying is much harder except for the fatigue: more traffic, delays, SWAP, and passenger/FA issues. Cargo is typically direct to destination fly as fast as the company or jet will allow, land and go to hotel.

Hope this helps.

Cargo pilots don't get fatigued. The US government say so.

Call in fatigued:
Scheduler can't wont help
You must speak with the DO
Expect a lengthy repetitive interrogation
This is recorded on the DO LOG
Your Fleet Capt will read this
Then they will call you as if they knew nothing, again expect interrogation
The incident will be recorded on your internal file.
So they know exactly how many times you called in sick, fatigued,etc.

You're right! FAR 117 is much worse than FAR 121+ our FDX ALPA contract.

That's not the experience I've had. The D/O does have to hear you say "it's unsafe for me to continue". Don't be afraid to say it. If you you are fatigued it's true. Perhaps with new fatigue mitigating protocols there is a report to fill out. Overall, I feel pretty well covered and I'm not afraid to call fatigued for myself or crew if necessary.