Preventing fatigue call abuse

[Ian_J]

This is my view of it as well. If they're not fit to fly, they're not fit to fly.

What I've realized is there might be a disconnect in how people understand the verbiage around this issue. For me, personally, I've always understood fatigue calls to be caused by operational issues at work, whereas I'd be calling in "sick" or saying I need personal time off for things that go haywire in my personal life.

Maybe other pilots are abusing the system, or maybe they don't understand the implications of what they're saying.

That makes sense for some operations for sure. At others, you are not supposed to call in sick unless actually sick so a fatigue call would be the only technically correct way to not work in that case. Also, at some places there is a dependability management program of some sort that tracks a rolling number of sick calls. A fatigue call wouldn’t count against that.

 

[BEEF SUPREME]

For those who mentioned time off banks, we don't differentiate between sick time, personal time, vacation time, etc. It's simply a bank of Paid Time Off for whatever the pilot wants/needs.

For those wanting more details of the incidents I mentioned, the pilot calling in after five days off was calling because he arrived home late from a personal trip on an airline flight that had been delayed a few hours. To me, that's clearly not what a fatigue call is intended for. Obviously we don't want a pilot flying if they're not fit to fly, but there needs to be a deduction of PTO in cases like a lack of planning on the pilot's part.

The other pilot calling in two days in a row was at home, not in a hotel. I don't know many details beyond that.

Our most experienced flight coordinator says anecdotally, the past few months have been the worst she's seen in several years of working with us, although we're flying at the same pace as always. Certain pilots have a reputation amongst the coordinators and it becomes obvious they're using the system to their benefit.

I'll work on improving the system. Lots of good ideas here regarding reporting and analyzing reports.

None of the above examples would qualify as a fatigue call that does not remove hours from your sick bank. The fatigue call would be honored but the hours would be removed from the pilots sick bank.

I called in fatigued when an operational issue caused me to be illegal for my next trip. The jetway broke in Denver and we had to get pushed back again start engines and taxi around to the other side of the terminal building and use a different jetway. This was off the script and took a lot longer than one would think. So my next trip dropped of my schedule automatically.

I was notified that I would be placed on a red eye turn to ANC because it was legal. However, there was no way for me to flip my sleep schedule around. At least not something I could personally manage. I called in fatigued. Since the fatigue issue was caused by something out of my control and was directly related to the operation the hours were not deducted from my sick bank.

If I was scheduled for an ANC red eye turn and a personal issue made me sleep poorly, I could call in fatigued, but the hours would be removed from my sick bank.

 

[JordanD]

This is my view of it as well. If they're not fit to fly, they're not fit to fly.

What I've realized is there might be a disconnect in how people understand the verbiage around this issue. For me, personally, I've always understood fatigue calls to be caused by operational issues at work, whereas I'd be calling in "sick" or saying I need personal time off for things that go haywire in my personal life.

Maybe other pilots are abusing the system, or maybe they don't understand the implications of what they're saying.

“Fatigued” means fatigued. I don’t see the need for all these semantics.

 

[roundout]

The ULCC I worked at explicitly said that this was permitted in the contract and I really liked that, I wish it was more common. I had more than one instance where I absolutely had to get home now to take care of my wife since we had no immediate family within 6 hours. Current shop does have some allowance for this, but I feel like it's a little more complicated than it should be.


I'd honestly say that's a fair number of my fatigue calls in my career. Sometimes, for whatever reason and not necessarily through anyone or anything's fault, you just can't get to sleep, even when you're dead tired. My theory is once you hit a certain point being awake your body is like "ok, we must NEED to be awake for some reason, I'm gonna keep this guy up." Having to worry about being punished for calling in would probably only make someones mind race and make the problem even worse.

The fuzzy, friendly, fun ULCC has "California sick" memorialized in the CBA, And it's probably the one thing I miss from working there.

 

[jrh]

“Fatigued” means fatigued. I don’t see the need for all these semantics.

These semantics affect deductions against paid time off, amongst other things.

 

[SurferLucas]

Discussions like these make me despise pilots…this ain’t rocket surgery, and only leads to slippery slopes/less safe operations.

Previous airline I worked for would “holistically look” at sick/fatigue calls if you were in the flow program. F that nonsense

 

[Boris Badenov]

What Ian J describes is how UPS does it.

I have plenty of problems with the big hats around here, but they do this stuff right. I've used it once, legit circumstances, got paid, never heard another word about it.

Now, if we could do something about the hectoring phone calls for using sick leave...

 

[Autothrust Blue]

These semantics affect deductions against paid time off, amongst other things.

Someone who legitimately 'abuses' FRMP or its equivalent is probably going to do something else that would be cause for termination anyway, just saying.

 

[JordanD]

These semantics affect deductions against paid time off, amongst other things.

This is another topic, is this place calling sick time "PTO"? Because that's a whole other thing I could bust a blood vessel about. It's either sick time or it's PTO.

 

[arkflyr]

The Texas redneck airline is really good about fatigue, no loss in pay to include premium or multiples, and all they ask is that you complete a voluntary fatigue report. Also they can't ask you to attempt to continue rest during a preemptive fatigue call anymore either.

I've never had a problem with sick calls here, I think if you call in more than two times in a row they call just to check to see if they need to get the ball rolling on disability leave but that's it.

 

[jrh]

Someone who legitimately 'abuses' FRMP or its equivalent is probably going to do something else that would be cause for termination anyway, just saying.

You might be right, but I'd prefer not to terminate anyone. Turnover is expensive, time consuming, and generally not good for anyone involved. It'd be nice if we could all work together to get work done without anyone being miserable in the process. My goal with this discussion was to accomplish the latter.

 

[jrh]

This is another topic, is this place calling sick time "PTO"? Because that's a whole other thing I could bust a blood vessel about. It's either sick time or it's PTO.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.

If choosing between a place that offers 15 days PTO and 5 days sick time, versus a place with 20 days PTO and no separate bank for sick time, which would you prefer, and why?

 

[🦈💜]

I don't like the tone here. If you trust pilots to fly your airplanes and keep your passengers(?) safe, you should trust their judgment and professionalism when it comes to fatigue. And if they feel a need to abuse the fatigue program to get time off, perhaps they need that time off and can't get it a different way.

The safety impact of mitigating the possibility of abuse has a much higher dollar value than the potential abuse.

 

[JordanD]

I'd like to hear your thoughts on this.

If choosing between a place that offers 15 days PTO and 5 days sick time, versus a place with 20 days PTO and no separate bank for sick time, which would you prefer, and why?

PTO is kind of a weird term in this industry because I feel like it gives the impression that it's the same kind of PTO that a lot of office workers have, which from anecdotal evidence seems to work like "I'm using PTO to take Tuesday off" and that's that. Somewhat understandably, aviation doesn't really work that like that, so I wish they'd just call it something else. I've never had any kind of time off or drop request that wasn't so dependent on staffing/reserve levels that I was really able to use it with any regularity. The last time was either during COVID when everyone was overstaffed or during early 2021 when I could regularly drop trips. To put it succinctly, if I can't use it freely as PTO, don't call it PTO. That said, I'm not sure in this hypothetical scenario what the stipulations for using it would be.

I know that doesn't really answer the question.

 

[JordanD]

I don't like the tone here. If you trust pilots to fly your airplanes and keep your passengers(?) safe, you should trust their judgment and professionalism when it comes to fatigue. And if they feel a need to abuse the fatigue program to get time off, perhaps they need that time off and can't get it a different way.

The safety impact of mitigating the possibility of abuse has a much higher dollar value than the potential abuse.

I know there's always a certain contingent of goobers that do abuse things and make life difficult for everyone, but I feel like as a whole everyone just deserves to be treated like an adult.

 

[Boris Badenov]

No-fault, no-questions fatigue calls is how it should work. But that presupposes that no one will abuse the policy. I think we've all met someone in the cockpit who would abuse (and probably HAS abused) this policy. Therefore, there must be some method of preventing abuse. The question is how to do so fairly. IMHO, the above policy of allowing unlimited fatigue calls with no discipline, but sending each case to a review panel consisting of both management and union representatives (or, if there is no union, some sort of pilot group representatives), with perhaps some sort of impartial mediator-of-last-resort if they're deadlocked makes good sense and is a reasonable compromise. (Edit: And then docking the pay if the fatigue call is deemed illegitimate).

 

[JordanD]

You might be right, but I'd prefer not to terminate anyone.

I'm sorry, what?

 

[Boris Badenov]

during COVID when everyone was overstaffed

My friend, I assure you that not *everyone* was overstaffed during COVID.

 

[🦈💜]

No-fault, no-questions fatigue calls is how it should work. But that presupposes that no one will abuse the policy. I think we've all met someone in the cockpit who would abuse (and probably HAS abused) this policy. Therefore, there must be some method of preventing abuse.

Argumentum non sequitur. You're assuming the abuse causes harm and therefore needs to be mitigated, but that's not in evidence.

There needs to be a lot more justification than three fatigue calls that OP considers dubious. Ultimately, if the mechanisms of preventing abuse lead to a false positive which causes an accident or incident, or (since, as op said, training is expensive) causes a pilot to leave, it's very probable that NOT having a method of preventing abuse is the right answer, regardless of whether abuse is actually occurring.

 

[jrh]

I don't like the tone here. If you trust pilots to fly your airplanes and keep your passengers(?) safe, you should trust their judgment and professionalism when it comes to fatigue. And if they feel a need to abuse the fatigue program to get time off, perhaps they need that time off and can't get it a different way.

The safety impact of mitigating the possibility of abuse has a much higher dollar value than the potential abuse.

You bring up some great points about trust and giving people options to get time off when they need time off.

I have to ask though...can you imagine any possible scenario where a pilot could abuse a fatigue/sick/personal/etc time off policy? Or will pilots always do the noble and correct thing 100% of the time?

It might not have come across this way in my original post, but I absolutely want what is best for the pilots. At the same time, we have a company to run, and to make that happen, the proper systems need to be in place. I'm trying to get those systems in place.