Night shift
Lately I've found myself flying what the pilots in my company call night shift. Typically anytime we duty on after about 5 in the afternoon, we end up being awake all night and don't get to sleep until the sun comes up the next morning. While I like flying at night, I'm not a big fan of night shift.
There is no typical day when it comes to my schedule. A lot of time, night shift is not planned for and can catch you after you've been awake since early in the morning. If the pager goes off, you are expected to go fly. Even if you have been awake all day. Last week I had a prime example of not being prepared for night shift. We had flown in to our base in the south with a perfectly working airplane, only to see it taken by another crew to finish a trip. We were told that there were no working planes at our base nor were any scheduled to come in, so we were to be without a plane for the foreseeable future. We went into our FAA regulated 10 hours of rest around 6pm with a green time of 4am. (Green time is when the company can page me for a trip.) We had no plane, so we weren't in a hurry to get to bed. I got some decent sleep and get up in time for free breakfast at the hotel. I'm awake and out of bed by 8:30am. I call in to see the status of planes in maintenance, hoping one would be fixed so I could go fly. Dispatch tells me that there will be a plane available, but not until tomorrow. So I plan my day as if I had the day off. I go to the Y and work out, have lunch with friends, go running and pick up another company pilot at the airport and bring him to the hotel. So I've had a busy day. Around 5pm I feel the vibration and hear the familiar beeping coming from my pocket. I've got a page from dispatch saying I have a trip. I call in to find out whats going on and am told I have an ASAP trip going to Mexico then to Indy. The plane came out of maintenance earlier than expected, so they booked us a trip.
We grab our stuff from the hotel and hurry to the airport. We get there and start our duty at 5:30pm. This means we now have 14 hours of duty time left. Just wonderful considering I've already been awake for 9 hours and could potentially still be on duty after being awake for 23 hours. My body does not like being up for 24 hours and lets me know on a regular basis. I've found that my best fatigue fighter is Rockstar energy drink with its whopping 160mg of caffeine really do the trick. If you take a look at the site Rockstar is linked to, you'll see a drink called WiredX344, good God that's an insane amount of caffeine!! (I'll have to give it a try)
The trip went pretty smooth and we didn't encounter too many delays along the route, but we did end up flying until 4am. The weather at Indy was marginal with 1000ft ceilings and gusty winds out of the north at 30kts, but even though I had been awake for 19+ hours, I still shot a good approach and managed to grease the landing. After we off loaded our freight and the excitement of landing in gusty conditions subsided, the fatigue really started to set in. The main problem with that, is we still had 3 hours of duty time left and the guy in charge up in dispatch wont let us go to the hotels anymore. In the past, if we ended a trip at the crack of dawn after flying all night, the guys in dispatch would send us to bed right away even if we still had half our duty left. The guy in charge now hangs us out at the airport and wont let us go to the hotel until we are almost out of duty time. Its a real sore subject with all of us pilots. This guy is universally disliked by the entire pilot group for just that reason. Thankfully the FBO had a real nice pilot lounge so the captain and I could relax, but by this time, my eyes didn't want to stay open.
So after sitting at the airport until we had only an hour of duty left, we finally got permission to go to the hotel. By the time I checked in to the hotel, it was 7am, the sun was up and I had been awake for 22.5 hours. I was dead tired and went right to sleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. 10 hours later the pager went off to send me on my way for another night shift.
There is no typical day when it comes to my schedule. A lot of time, night shift is not planned for and can catch you after you've been awake since early in the morning. If the pager goes off, you are expected to go fly. Even if you have been awake all day. Last week I had a prime example of not being prepared for night shift. We had flown in to our base in the south with a perfectly working airplane, only to see it taken by another crew to finish a trip. We were told that there were no working planes at our base nor were any scheduled to come in, so we were to be without a plane for the foreseeable future. We went into our FAA regulated 10 hours of rest around 6pm with a green time of 4am. (Green time is when the company can page me for a trip.) We had no plane, so we weren't in a hurry to get to bed. I got some decent sleep and get up in time for free breakfast at the hotel. I'm awake and out of bed by 8:30am. I call in to see the status of planes in maintenance, hoping one would be fixed so I could go fly. Dispatch tells me that there will be a plane available, but not until tomorrow. So I plan my day as if I had the day off. I go to the Y and work out, have lunch with friends, go running and pick up another company pilot at the airport and bring him to the hotel. So I've had a busy day. Around 5pm I feel the vibration and hear the familiar beeping coming from my pocket. I've got a page from dispatch saying I have a trip. I call in to find out whats going on and am told I have an ASAP trip going to Mexico then to Indy. The plane came out of maintenance earlier than expected, so they booked us a trip.
We grab our stuff from the hotel and hurry to the airport. We get there and start our duty at 5:30pm. This means we now have 14 hours of duty time left. Just wonderful considering I've already been awake for 9 hours and could potentially still be on duty after being awake for 23 hours. My body does not like being up for 24 hours and lets me know on a regular basis. I've found that my best fatigue fighter is Rockstar energy drink with its whopping 160mg of caffeine really do the trick. If you take a look at the site Rockstar is linked to, you'll see a drink called WiredX344, good God that's an insane amount of caffeine!! (I'll have to give it a try)
The trip went pretty smooth and we didn't encounter too many delays along the route, but we did end up flying until 4am. The weather at Indy was marginal with 1000ft ceilings and gusty winds out of the north at 30kts, but even though I had been awake for 19+ hours, I still shot a good approach and managed to grease the landing. After we off loaded our freight and the excitement of landing in gusty conditions subsided, the fatigue really started to set in. The main problem with that, is we still had 3 hours of duty time left and the guy in charge up in dispatch wont let us go to the hotels anymore. In the past, if we ended a trip at the crack of dawn after flying all night, the guys in dispatch would send us to bed right away even if we still had half our duty left. The guy in charge now hangs us out at the airport and wont let us go to the hotel until we are almost out of duty time. Its a real sore subject with all of us pilots. This guy is universally disliked by the entire pilot group for just that reason. Thankfully the FBO had a real nice pilot lounge so the captain and I could relax, but by this time, my eyes didn't want to stay open.
So after sitting at the airport until we had only an hour of duty left, we finally got permission to go to the hotel. By the time I checked in to the hotel, it was 7am, the sun was up and I had been awake for 22.5 hours. I was dead tired and went right to sleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. 10 hours later the pager went off to send me on my way for another night shift.
posted by Windsor at 9:25 PM
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