scrubbedexpat091

You should see what pilots do who don't want to live in their base city (lots prefer to stay in their home town) kind of scary how little sleep some of the pilots out there have.


Shift work just sucks, I hate it, but always end up in it, nothing I do now is safety sensitive, but I used to at the airline work until 11:30pm, get home at 12:15am-12:30am, and then sleep by 1:30am, up at 3:45am to be back at work by 5am. (sometimes I slept at work) and while people just saw us as baggage handlers, we also did the weight and balance and other important safety sensitive duties, and man sometimes I was so tired, I couldn't think straight, but I was expected to be 100%.

Flight attendants would arrive at 1130p on the last flight, and be out at 730am on the first of the day, they are only needed 8 hours rest, but not 8 hours of actual rest time, just 8 hours between duty end and start.

How much sleep do you think they actually got in those 8 hours?

Or paramedics and their 24 hour shifts?

Amazing what we make people who need to be awake and alert go through and how sleep deprived people can be.

When my wife had surgery, the doctor had been doing surgery since 4am, and her's was at 10pm, no idea when the doctor slept last, just know how the doctor kept saying it was her last and she could go sleep unless there was an emergency...... But when thats the only doctor available, what does one do?


Sleep is not taken seriously in this modern world and we have too many sleep deprived workers out there.


I have a friend who is a nurse and to be fair and not have anyone on overnights long term, they flip each week, one week 3 12's 7am to 7pm and then the next 3 12's 7pm to 7am.

I prefer to just have all overnights, the switching messes my brain up and leads to me quitting, some hotels will have people work 11pm to 7am and then back 8 hours later at 3pm to 11pm, and then 7am to 3pm, or some idiotic variation of that.

Pulaski

When I worked nights my shifts were Sunday 10pm to Friday 6am, 5x8hr shifts, which I usually stretched to 7pm -7/8am. But on Friday mornings I would go home at 6am, sleep from 7am to 1pm, then go back and work 2pm-10pm on Friday afternoon. And then go home and sleep from around 11pm to 5am and then go back to work 6am-12noon/4pm on Saturday. I could usually collect around 80hrs pay per week.

It did help that I lived only 5 minutes, on my bicycle, from work.

scrubbedexpat091

When I was in my 20's, I could do that, I'd pick up lots of shifts from co-workers at the airline, only made 6.94 when I started, so I had to work a lot of hours to make enough each pay check.

Now inconsistent shifts mess up my sleep schedule, and I end up wanting to sleep when I need to be awake, and awake (like now) when I need to be sleeping, and I just don't have the energy anymore, 40 hours a week is almost too much these days....

When I do graveyards now, I just sleep all day more or less 9am to 10pm usually or I am just too tired.

Pulaski

A timely news report, in today's Telegraph: Tired technicians "repair" wrong plane!

Jerseygirl

A few years ago a plane crashed when trying to land at Buffalo airport. The co-pilot had travelled for hours to get to the airport before take off. She slept on the floor of the ladies bathrooms before boarding the plane as the airline did not provide overnight accommodation for pilots in such circumstances.

scrubbedexpat091

That in industry norm though, airlines only pay for overnights they require as part of the pilots schedule.

When one chooses to commute they are responsible to ensure they arrive in their base city well rested and fit for duty.

Jerseygirl

Yes that was revealed during the crash investigation...but who would have thought eh? When you board a morning flight especially...you assume the pilots are refreshed and ready to go...not that they may have been traveling all night and haven't slept.

scrubbedexpat091

In the situation that I experienced our plane never got off the ground as they caught the error, but we had 2 planes overnight in my station and one needed maintenance each night and the other didn't (unless the pilots wrote up an issue) but one night the 2 a/c were only 1 digit apart on their tail number, and the maintenance lead had been on duty for 18 hours when the planes arrived, and he misread the paperwork and they spent all night working on a plane that didn't need maintenance....

Other then a cancelled flight, a suspension of the maintenance lead, and 150 pissed off passengers nothing happened.

This article is an extreme, but I'd imagine it happens more often then we will ever know about.

scrubbedexpat091

We had our base on the west coast, and a red eye bank from the west coast to east coast, and so many pilots flew in from the east coast to take those red eyes out, imagine flying 5-6 hours, then 1-2 hours at the airport, then flying back to the east coast all night.


I took a red eye once from Phoenix to NYC and this was way back in the late 90's, but the guy next to me was a TWA pilot who lived in Phoenix and based at JFK, he flew all night from Phoenix, arrived into JFK just around 6am and was going to work an 8am fight back to the west coast.

audio

Or back in the good ole days, they may have been partying all night

scrubbedexpat091

We had 2 pilots who partied all night get caught and arrested and convicted and sent to prison. They didn't make it into the air, but they made it off the gate.

Happened way back in 2002, and that airline has since merged and no longer exists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americ...nes_Flight_556

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/trave...k-pilots_x.htm


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/drunk-ai...s-face-prison/

audio

…..and there have been many other cases but years ago there were no legislations against it by some governments.

markonline1

The worst I ever had was a finish at 2230 and back in at 0630. By the time you got home fell asleep and then had to be up again, it was about a 5 hour sleep. I could probably back that if my job at the time didn't concern of concentrating like **** watching an X-ray machine. They were tough shifts. Luckily, Europe stepped in and mandated no more quick turn shifts. Unfortunately, America isn't so concerned about its workers rest, so next month, I expected to be hammered in my new job during concours week. At least this job is fun and outside so I should be able to power through with the aid of a few gallons of Red Bull inside me though.