Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Fatigue; Situational Awareness
Other Fatigue
General None Reported / Taken
Company Policy; Human Factors
My crew was briefed to do 'ready spare' beginning at 2100E ending at 0400E.  (Interestingly enough; the evening before the tentative brief was 'ready spare' from 1900E to 0200E; but after I fatigued the night before the brief changed to 2100E to 0400E 'ready spare.'  There is no doubt in my mind that this was changed as 'punishment' for having called in fatigued.  Confirming evidence to this was that upon arrival at the airport that evening; there were no scheduled flights out after our arrival.  While I understand that we may have been covering flights for other airports; it was obvious that it was a slow night.  Additionally; the other crew sitting 'ready spare' was on from 1900L to 0100L.)  While I do better during the morning shifts; I did my best to prepare for the late night 'ready spare' duty by exercising heavily in the morning and attempting to sleep in the afternoon which I was reasonably successful at doing from about 1500E to about 1800E.  That afternoon we received an email from the Asst. Director of Operations regarding notification that we would be assigned 'ready spare' for the next night;  from 1900E to 0200E and that we should adjust our rest accordingly; so as not to disrupt possible recovery flights assigned to us.  As mentioned above; I had already attempted to 'adjust my rest accordingly' in anticipation of this night's assignment.  Upon arrival at the airport we were informed that our aircraft would not be arriving until after 2100E.  At its arrival; we met the aircraft and I proceeded to do a pre-flight.  During the pre-flight I noticed a 'ding' in one of the fan blades on the Number 2 engine.  I called for a Mechanic to look at it and he said that it needed to be addressed as it was significant.  I wrote the fan blade up which grounded the aircraft.  Once Maintenance declared the aircraft to be out of service; we received a brief around 2230E for a show at 0845E in the morning to limo for a one hour show/go for a transcontinental.  This meant trying to get to sleep less than six hours after I had attempted to 'adjust my rest' by sleeping in the afternoon in anticipation of being on duty until 0400E; only to be told  to show at legal in the morning for the assignment.  I called the ACP on duty and explained that we had prepared ourselves for our duty 2100E to 0400E and now were told to 'shut down' immediately so as to make the radical shift from anticipating going to bed at 0500E or later to having to awaken at 0700E to do the assigned flying. I asked that he see if this could be changed.  He attempted to do so; but scheduling would not even consider making any changes to our schedule.  We could only accept the duty as assigned.  I find it ironic that we received the standard memo from Operations advising us of our assignment to 'ready spare' and to prepare accordingly for the next night when we were already anticipating a very late night; which we did; only to have scheduling make a radical shift in our schedule from a late night shift to a morning shift in a matter of minutes.  How can the company send us memos advising us to adjust our rest in anticipation of a late night 'hot spare' assignment and then have Scheduling whipsaw us completely in the other direction?  This is absurd.  We were put in a no-win situation caused by Scheduling's lack of willingness to be aware of the fact that we are not machines that can be turned off and on like robots and being completely unwilling to even consider what they were asking us to do.  Asking us to try and prepare ourselves for duty well outside normal sleep patterns is unrealistic enough; let alone asking us to do that and THEN shifting us the other way in a manner of minutes.  This goes against all sleep and fatigue research published by NASA on pilot fatigue issues.   Relying solely on the 'fatigue call' is insane in that it fails to apply any reasonable common sense to pilot scheduling.  I would like to see management and schedulers attempt to workat their desks the constantly shifting hours that they expect us to fly multi-million dollar jets.
A Fractional Captain laments schedule changes that result in fatigued flying due to preparing for night flying then suddenly changed back to morning flying.