EMB ERJ 145 ER/LR
Fatigue
Other Fatigue
General Work Refused
Company Policy; Human Factors; Procedure; Weather
I feel like the fatigue has built over the duration of the pairing. On my first day of the pairing I reported to the airport early to tend to some other business. This put me in the airport environment about 3 hours before my show time. The previous night I received 8 hours of quality sleep. I felt refreshed and ready to start my trip. At show time; I noticed the flight had been delayed 1-1.5 hours due to a late inbound aircraft. Subsequently; we would be late for the rest of the day. We arrived to the hotel that night at about 12:30 AM Eastern Time (EST) and I didn't fall asleep till sometime between 1:00 AM and 1:30 AM. Our show the next day was around 4:00 PM so in order to prepare for another evening of flying I allowed myself to sleep in longer than I normally would. I woke up about 9:30 AM EST on day two. I received about 8 hours of sleep; but was of poor quality. Most of the night was spent tossing and turning. Nonetheless; I felt with the later show I would be prepared to fly that evening. Two hours before our show we were notified that our flight had been canceled and they were working on modifying our schedule. After many rounds of adjustment (most being much better than the final result) we were told to stay in the hotel until the next morning were we would then fly one leg then deadhead back to base to resume our pairing. The Captain would be leaving the crew to continue on another schedule. With the new schedule we now had a 5:00 AM wake up (4:00 AM CST) to be at the airport for our show time. Since I prepared to be flying that evening I was now wide awake until almost 12:00 AM. I received 5 hours of what felt like ok sleep. The next day we realized our deadhead was not going to put us back in base in time to resume our pairing. We accepted the fact that the day was ultimately going to be behind the entire day. We were originally scheduled for a 10 hour duty day to move into a 14 hour overnight. As the day progressed we were again modified to fly a different turn out of base due to our tardiness. This turn ended up having an added 1.5 hour maintenance delay. Ultimately we were about 3 hours behind our schedule. Once we arrived at our third overnight we were 3 hours late. We arrived at the hotel at about 8:40 PM CST. I had now been awake since 4:00 AM CST on about 5 hours of sleep. Total duty day after crew scheduling modifications came to 15:10. I ate a light dinner as I had not had a chance to obtain food due to delays. I was in my hotel room by 10:00 PM CST as I prepared for bed. With the next morning being the morning for our time change to CDT it was theoretically 11:00 PM. By the time I feel asleep it was some where around 12:30 AM. Our show time was 8:05 AM CDT leaving me with about 6.5 hours of what felt like ok sleep. As I awoke this morning I notice my eyes were red and irritated and I had a minor headache. We arrived to the airport and the flight departed on time. Throughout the flight I notice my reaction time was slow; I had a hard time focusing and I felt myself wanting to fall asleep. There was quite a bit of weather to deal with that concluded with an approach to minimums. The flight completed with no incident but looking back I did not feel I would have been able to perform at my highest level should a major event have occurred. This is when I decide to remove myself from the remainder of my trip. I notified Crew Scheduling as soon as we deplaned. Obviously the circumstances that caused the cancellations and modifications are never predictable or avoidable. However; I do feel the tactic of just scheduling something just get to the next segment with no regard to crew rest or movement greatly reduces the ability of the crew to mitigate fatigue. Many of the modifications that Crew Scheduling provided before the final result would have left me in a much better position to be well rested and ready for what a day of bad weather flying usually brings. I felt like I did my best in trying to prepare forthe pairing that was presented to me.
EMB145 First Officer describes a four day paring greatly altered by maintenance and weather delays; that resulted in a fatigue call to Scheduling on the final day.