Commercial Fixed Wing
Flight Crew Total 14800; Flight Crew Type 7563
Fatigue
Other fatigue/flt crew scheduling
General Physical Injury / Incapacitation
Company Policy; Staffing; Human Factors
Isn't pilot fatigue one of the primary causes in major airline accidents?  I am seeing an extremely unsafe trend in the domestic scheduling of narrow body pilots at our airline. In general terms; the company--seemingly as a common practice now--is building pairings on that have pilots report for duty at or prior to 0500; fly one or two legs; layover during daylight hours for somewhere in the neighborhood of 13 hours; report back for duty that night to begin flying on the back side of the clock. I was horrified to learn that FAR 117 allows this type of flying. It is impossible for a pilot to flip their body clock around in such a short period of time. Pilots are getting walloped at both ends of their sleep cycle; extremely early and extremely late. The circadian rhythm is completely thrown out the window and this is creating dangerously tired pilots. I have been at our airline for 23 years and in my time here; I have never seen pairings that have shown such total disregard for sleep cycles and safety.I have spoken to many pilots who have flown these types of trips and have found themselves utterly exhausted by landing time. Just looking at schedules like these on paper is horrifying. Any lay person can see that reporting for work at 0445 then working again that same night until midnight and later; is excruciatingly fatiguing. As pilots; we do our best to show up rested for our first flight segment. This means that if we must be at the airport by 0445; we are going to bed early the night before to make sure we have proper rest and are fit for duty when we begin our day. Just because we are provided a hotel at the destination doesn't make us ready for meaningful sleep. On the contrary; the time we start spooling down and feeling sleepy; are the time we are supposed to be reporting back to work. The body clock just can't be flipped around that fast and these scheduling practices are unsafe.At our base; there are some 28 out of 64 pairings that have these dangerous double duty pairings. Please cease this dangerous scheduling practice before there is another major accident due to pilot fatigue.
An air carrier Captain addressed the dilatory effects of flight schedules which require an extreme early AM departure; a minimum midday layover and a second duty period of back side of the clock flying; thus combining the two most mentally and physically debilitating types of flying into a single 24 hour period which contains no rest possibility during a normal sleep cycle.