How I deal with jetlag
The honoust truth is that jetlag deals with me and after ten years of being a longhaul pilot my body and mind still struggles with it at times,
I have just returned from Cancun, I was originally rostered to fly to Punta Cana but due to the massive disruption Irma caused, I was asked if I was willing to operate to Mexico instead.
We fly a lot of our passengers to Orlando Sanford and due to hurricane Irma some of our passengers still needed "rescueing" as they got stuck in Florida due to airports being closed for several days.
Tiredness
Generally the main issues that pilots have with most airlines is that the workload is to high and tiredness is a huge factor.
We have a system in place that allows you to write a report when you have flown a particulary tiring roster or feel to fatigued to go to work.
Luckily most European airlines have an open policy that encourages pilots to not operate an airplane when sleep deprived.
So people do call in being to tired before starting a duty.
EASA flight time limitations
https://www.aerotime.aero/en/civil/12818-pilot-fatigue-br-time-for-a-strike
source: https://www.flightdeckfriend.com/how-many-hours-can-pilots-work-in-one-day/
As you can see in this table on a typical day we are allowed to fly a 13 hour day with two pilots on a 1-2 sector day.
But generally the rules allow us to extend this to another 2-3 hours on top of that.
Longhaul pilots fly typically 4 longhaul flights a month. Which means for instance they fly out from for instance
London-Cancun first day and second day Cancun-London arriving back on the 3rd day early in the morning local time.
We can fly to Cancun with two pilots, which means that on a typical trip we start for instance on a friday to drive to work to be at 0900 report time, with an hour to brief and setup the aircraft for departure.
Start the engines and taxi out usually takes aeound 15 mins but sometimes longer.
The flight time is usually around 10:00 hours, followed by 15 minutes taxiing in to the arrival stand, followed by shutting down the engines, finishing off the paperwork which takes around 30 minutes followed by going through the airport security/ passport control and grabbing a coach/ taxi to the hotel which sometimes takes up to 30-45 mins.
Arriving at the hotel we deal often with hotels that haven't got our rooms ready which could also end up with another wait for (sometimes 15-30 mins but I have seen as much as 4 hours in a particular hotel we use in Jamaica)
So let's do the maths: from the moment you leave your house untill ariving in the room in Cancun:
Generally at best you have a 13- 14 hour day with only two pilots.
Luckily the 787 is quite reliable but technical issues or delays do happen which is when we can use extension on our flight duty.
So we could then extend our duty legally to be a 16 hour day of flight duty perior which effectively means a full day from home to hotel bedroom in 16-17 hours.
Bullet
At that stage when you finally got to your hotel you might be thinking of using a Bullet (joking), but that is not what I meant with this headline.
These flights are called "bullets", so basically a longhaul flight within 3 days without a clear days rest in the hotel. A quick up and down duty.
Sleeping pattern
So you finally got to the hotel, had some shitty airplane food, feeling pretty worn out sitting in a dry, relatively stressful environment all day. What happens next?
Often we arrive midday around 15:00 in Cancun, but back home it is already 5 hours later (20:00).
Often we decide to meetup later on the day to have some food and a drink in the bar with colleagues around 18:00 local (23:00 at home) in the bar, trying to stay awake until 21:00 (02:00 am at home)
By that time you have been up from 07:00 am local to 02:00 am, around 19 hours.
Wake up time
Hopefully the hotel isn't to noisy and you had a good nice sleep. Often though the body wakes you up at 04:00 local time if not earlier as back home it would already be 09:00.
You feel ok, but tired. I generally force myself up to do some excersise in the morning and go for an early breakfast.
Trying to stay away from the coffee your body craves for.
I might then walk for an hour around the hotel or do a bit of reading/ steeming and try to get some more sleep.
report time for the return
So eventually you will fly back home again that day, typically around 15:00 local time we would depart the hotel again, generally the flighttime is shorter around 8:45 hours due to the winds.
If all goes well and no technical delays we tend to then flyr through the night and arrive back home around 07/ 08 am local time in the Uk. By which time you will go to home eventually often being in the hotel around 09:00 am.
As you can see these flights are tiring and although doable, if anything goes wrong your already long day becomes potentially a much longer day.
Now sometimes you can have these flights 4/1/2 times in a month and although that seems not to bad, sleep deprivation accumulates.
here comes the sun
When you fly back through the night and you see the sunrise fully developing from a tiny spec to a full laser beam of light straight in your face in the early morning, you are generally reminded that you feel more tired then expected.
The sunglassed and sunvisors are being put up, whilst lowering the electric seat to a level that shileds your eyes from the bright superstar.
Now all you have to do is land the 150 ton plane at 150 kts in what are hopefully nice weather conditions. "ah damn.... just received the latest ATIS: rwy in use 26l, wind 180/32 G45 windshear reported Clouds broken at 300 feet temperature 12 dewpoint 10 altimeter 1012. (aircraft max crosswind limit 40 kts discounting the gusts)
subtile onset of fatigue and tiredness
With the best will in the world, you will have days that you struggle to sleep well. Longhaul pilots deal with tiredness all the time and although there are ways to report being to fatigued to go to work, I have never seen a pilot go fatigued flying back to the UK.
This can mean that most of us feel good enough to operate and see no reason to go fatigued, or perhaps we don't recognise how tired we really are. It is a judgment call, but I personally think that we fly around to tired on particular routes.
The airlines are well aware of this but as always it is all about the money and how far things can be pushed to keep it legal and safe enough.
Airline travel is the safest form and the fact that we have two pilots in the flight deck acts as a huge safety net for mistakes made by the other.
As it is a professional job, we are always trying to do our best to minimize mistakes made. It is part of the job and what makes it a challenge. The perfect flight is yet to be flown.
probability
Every day over 100k flights are scheduled. In the USA already they tightened up the flight time limitations after a serious accident caused the lives of many when it opunfolded both pilots hardly slept the night before.
source: http://dead-tired.eu/pilot-fatigue/facts/accidents-involving-fatigue
EASA
We only recently implemented the European new flight time limitation rules and it will come as no surprise that the rules actually allow for even more tiring flight-patterns.
They still somehow don't recognise the fact that flying for endless hours, with crappy food, irregular lifestyle patterns is a big problem
Wake up!
Everybody needs to wake up and I mean everybody,
Tiredness kills people on the roads every day and it is naive to say that the next accident in the air will not be caused by tiredness. I personally think not enough is being done by the airlines/ unions to stop fatigue.
Right now the airline unions are mentioning they can't do anything as they don't receive enough fatigue reports from the pilots to argue with management about the issues that are still clearly there.
But one doesn't have to be a rocket scientist to know that working 17 hours straight in a highly dynamic environment is tiring and allows for accidents to happen due to tiredness.
passengers
Airline competition is fierce and just as taking extra fuel on board an airplane costs money so does taking an extra pilot.
I think a solution can be very easy, just force the airlines to carry extra pilots on flights that look tiring on paper.
At least then there will be no competition and I am sure passengers are willing to pay a little extra for creating a safer environment in the cockpit.
health and safety first
It always makes me chuckle when on a hot coffee cup it mentions watch out coffee cup might be hot.
Or when we walk through security we are pointed out that we can't take moee than 100 ml liquids, even though we fly a plane of 70 ton highky flammable liquids.
It won't be long before shoe laces have a label on it that warn you that you have to tie them up first as an immenent crash is potential if you don't.
Yet when money is involved all of a sudden risks are being justified to take. You only have to talk to any pilot-union to know our rosters are to tiring. Which from my point of view means the risk is real and only the airliness/ pilots or it's passengers can change this. By simply changing the rules or refusing to fly with a particular airline/ going on strike.
pilots working conditions
Rests me to mention that logically speaking those airlines that cut the costs so fine that they offer incredibly cheap tickets are undoubtly pushing limits every where to make it work.
Be aware that when you fly with these airlines you support working conditions that you probably wouldn't wish upon yourself.
Ryanair is from my point of view on airline that albeit operates safe, pushes their staff to undesirable working conditions.
I rather walk to Paris then flying with them, just out of principle.
I think we all should be made aware what is going on in the airline world and perhaps things will change for the better!
Flying is still the most safe way of travel in the world, but can we really justify a crash happening at all, when we could have prevented it by putting more pilots on a flight or minimizing tiring rosters.
Why are we allowing pilots to fly at the limits of what is humanly healthy/ possible when in the meantime the risk and safety department of any company is worried about a lawcase for somebody burning their hands on a cup of coffee that is hopefully hot!
Tiredness is the less fun part of the job from my point of view and although I appreciate that most people will say:" nobody has to feel sorry for pilots", we all need to put safety on our agenda when it involves real risks of things happening.