Completely disagree.

 

It’s right there on the reporting app. Informational is an option. Pairing construction is the reason. The pairing optimizer builds pairings to 117 and the contract and lowest overall cost to the company. They won’t change it if we aren’t reporting it.

 

That’s some ridiculous thinking. Filling out a fatigue report isn’t saying you’re too fatigued to fly; it’s saying this route/pairing is fatiguing. A proper SMS program will see trends and do something before it’s ends up being a smoking hole in the ground.

This isn’t the regionals; pilots are empowered to speak up about issues they believe to be a threat to safety.

 

It’s unfortunate so many pilots in this industry conflate fatigue with being tired, or a long day, or just a crappy pairing.

Fatigue is cumulative, and everyone’s level varies. Going into a pairing like the one described, most pilots would experience an increase in fatigue, but not to a dangerous level, or even a “call out fatigued level”. Another pilot could already have a higher level of fatigue starting the pairing and it gets worse from there. This is where informational reports are valuable, to track pairings that have potential to push fatigued pilots to more critical levels.

Every pilot is different all the time, and we don’t work/live in a vacuum. Sleep habits, stresses, home life etc etc all play a role in ongoing fatigue accumulation.

Ironically, the high degree of schedule flexibility and manipulation that we enjoy is also the reason that fatigue planning/scheduling is so difficult. Waiving days off, swapping for commutable flights and long days, picking up extra/premium flying in lieu of rest. That doesn’t mean that fatiguing pairings do not exist, but this is why fatigue calls are investigated, to determine what other circumstances are involved.

 

While I agree with a lot of what you’re saying there is a difference between chronic vs acute fatigue. Not all fatigue is cumulative. But I agree that we all should be filling out these informational fatigue reports because some of these pairings need to go away.


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Was just looking thru the January pairing out of LAS and was floored when I saw a few five leg days...ouch!

 

Been happening many months.

 

Do those 5 leg trips credit a lot? That sounds brutal!

 

If it’s the LAS- BUR truffle shuffle ending in SAN then it’s not big deal.

 

Oh God, and I was outraged when I had to do a 4 leg