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12 legs a day!

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tired_pilot

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 25, 2002
Posts
178
Just thought you guys would find this interesting since fatigue and performance has been on the board.
Pan Am Express..dba Boston and Maine's having pilots fly the J-31...12 legs a day, 16 hour duty days most days, 6 on 1 off schedule. J-31 in the NE..no autopilot.....let you draw your own conclusions.
Fly safe!
 
Pushing their luck

Percentages will tell you that with that amount of flying time without rest, it is only a matter of time until an accident occurs. Especially flying a plane without autopilot, fatigue from both physical and mental tasks will compound.
 
How many hours a day do you fly? Doing 12 legs without breaking 8 hours seems pretty hard unless you're doing Cape Air routes. Are they 121? If they are you've gotta be bumping up against the 34 hour/7 day rule doing days like that. I know I've done 8 leg/14 hour duty days in a 1900 (no A/P) and all I can say is both of us were positively stupid by the 6th or 7th leg.

Good luck.

Get out as soon as you can!
 
Excuse me if I'm a dumby but if my Warrior has an autopilot why wouldn't a sexy turbine aircraft have one?
 
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Alot of commuter turbo props don't have an autopilot. The Beech 1900 and J-31 to name a few. Your warrior may have GPS also, but most turboprops don't have that either. Ive flown 8 legs a day without an autopilot, it's ridiculous, then factor in some weather and it's downright unsafe. Shamrock is right, by the end of the day both your heads are jello. Sexy turbine aircraft, that's funny:D
 
A J31 is sexy???? (kind of like Fat B@stard) No offense to anyone, but I wouldn't go that far. These aircraft don't have auto-pilots to save weight. 100 pounds of auto-pilot gear is 100 pounds of revenue that cannot be carried. I realize that may sound stupid to someone outside the industry, but business is business to a bean counter.
 
Also don't forget that no autopilot means no autopilot training (saves simulator and ground school time), no expense to buy it, and no expense to maintain it. Since a second pilot is going to be required anyway, there's no financial incentive for the company to install it. So they don't.

Like the bathroom, if it has dollar signs attached to it, they won't install it.
 
My record is a scheduled 14 leg weekend shift while I was temporarily based in Naples, FL. Scheduled for 7:59 flight time, and never left central Florida. We were lucky to find our way home by the end of the day.

The things we do for flying time.

Now I think, "THREE legs? How cruel!!!"

Of course that was when I was (ahem) working.

Well, I think I will go to the mailbox and wait for my unemployment check.
 
sydeseet and CornJulio,

Thanks! Good explanation of why there is no autopilot on the small commuters. Everytime it came up, I would say, why?, it couldn't weigh that much. But when you factor in the cost of purchase and training and multiply that times the total fleet, you're talking about a real impact on the bottom line. When operating on thin margins, I guess any company would cut whatever they can get away with.

But I do take exception to your comments about "Sexy J-31. That would depend on where you're coming from. If you've been stareing at a glass cockpit inside a B-767 for the past five years, a J-31 is a low-rent pile of junk. But if you're the guy washing aircraft every weekend, and on occassion, get to fly .6 in a clapped out Cherokee 140, then a J-31 is "VERY SEXY". Man! How quickly we forget where we came from.
 
By no means does this compare, but last summer, I worked 36 hours over two days. That's two consecutive 18 hour shifts. This was also labour work. I honestly felt like I was going to pass out, and my boss yelled at me because I fell asleep in the middle of my shift! I can't imaging flying for that long. That's just plain stupid for everyone.
 

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