Im just wondering what the average duty is for you guys? Some people say 12 hours a day. Thats seems pretty brutal if youre doing it 7 days in a row.
It varies, but 10-12 hours is pretty typical. I will say this: I feel much less exhausted at the end of a 7-day tour here than I did at the end of a 4-day at my previous regional.
A lot of factors play into that: better rest because of better hotels,
longer rest because 10 hours in the min, not 8, longer turn times (1 hour is the normal min turn, no 15 mins), real food instead of food court crap, and so on.
Keep in mind, too, that half or all of the first and last day are often spent just riding on airliners getting to and from our planes. Yeah, airline travel is taxing, too, but it's less demanding than actually flying.
Further, some of our job involves being
available for a trip, in case a flight pops up, or another airplane breaks. Many duty days include a few hours at an FBO not doing much. So you can recuperate in front of a nice plasma TV eating lunch. That helps too.
Having crews spread out and available is part of how we're able to recover a trip for our clients so quickly after a mechanical issue. I had one last tour that involved diverting to another airport on short notice. There was another NetJets plane taxiing into the FBO to take our passengers
30 minutes after we landed.
If you're curious about some numbers, I'm in the Excel, one of our busiest fleets. In the past 11 months, I've averaged 41 hours of flying per month. Of the 145 duty days I've had in that period, 29 were less than 8 hours, 74 were between 9 and 11 hours, 33 were 12 to 14 hours, and 9 were over 14 hours. (That's as detailed as the summary part of our online report gets, unfortunately.)
I will say that, of those days that were 12-14 hours, my days were usually something on the order of 12.5 hours. (That includes time closing up the airplane, etc.)