How to take the next 6 years off, a.k.a, my transfer to the Air Force

[insanebikerboy]

Have people in Navy squadrons experienced a significant amount of deviations from crew rest policy? Just trying to get a sense about that, because that’s not something I’ve seen personally.

I saw things like the CO requiring dudes to be in to work for 0800 AOMs when they landed at 0330 that same morning. I saw guys get reamed for not being at ground events on the schedule when they had later flights that day.

We did push back and basically just told those COs to go f-themselves, but the stigma was there.

 

[SlickAg]

At my recent swim phys the AMSO gave a great brief on circadian rhythms and the associated effects of constantly switching back and forth from the night page to the day page, which happens quite a bit in the VTs with little warning or forethought. It was very good info and pretty shocking to see the ideal recovery times and how dependent we are on chemicals to help us out (caffeine, energy drinks, etc). I think SOF has done a good job of adopting the Tactical Athlete model or whatever they call it, and I think we could improve our attitude towards the overall physical and mental well-being of our force besides the PFA.

Although not the same as “crew rest” per se, the 121 world takes this very seriously and overall I think has better policies in place to ensure that pilots are well rested and ready to go.

 

[whitesoxnation]

Can't remember the last time, if ever, I've heard of someone falling out of an event for crew rest being busted.

With flight time and quals as hard to come by as they are these days, who is going to cnx?

Also, if you cnx, there will be a perception that you can't control your life and aren't reliable. Good luck progressing.

It's one of those things that happens and everyone knows it happens, but no one talks about it. If it were ever a CF in a mishap then everyone would act shocked but know they've done the same thing plenty of times.

Have not seen people get put on a schedule w/o having a chance for 8 hours of rest, although you can use fuzzy math to figure the time off required to get 8 hours. USAF 12 hours takes away a lot of the fuzzy math.

 

[picklesuit]

Watched multiple crews run into the ground on min-turn evolutions last deployment. Circadian rhythm wasn’t a thing, luckily it was always dark in Iceland, so the sun generally wasn’t a factor.

Had to maintain 24/7 coverage, so there was little wiggle room for deviations left/right on Flypro.

Fatigue was absolutely there, and we worked to make it “better” but no way an AF unit would’ve gotten that mission done with their strict adherence to rules.

There are pluses and minuses to that mindset, but having flown the AF program, and having flown the Navy, I’ll take Navy, even with our flaws.

 

[HSMPBR]

Aircrew scheduled to brief 10 hrs after their land time. In that case we obviously just shutdown airborne and full-auto into the line then skip the washes and paperworks to run home. There’s no work to do before the brief, even though we aren’t cowboys about planning, so we just roll in at brief time and revel in that rest. That also means the crew went from flying at night to flying/FCF during the day. I bet they’ll be back on the next night because that happens. All. The. Time.

I’m not complaining. We don’t complain. We just get it done until something bad happens, then we do a safety stand down, then we go right back to doing what we were doing.

 

[Brett327]

It's even simple stuff like switching from the day page to the night page. The transition is scheduled, and it is longer than, "Well, we gave you the weekend."




In the VTs and the FRS, crew rest was nothing more than time you weren't on the flight schedule. But that's not crew rest in the USAF. In the USAF you don't mission plan or prep for a brief during your crew rest.

USMC fleet was different depending on the front office/OpsO. Some were good about it. Others... not so much.

The Navy would have to significantly change how the SWOs run the boat, as well as how aircrew staterooms are constructed, in order to meet AF crew rest standards. The noise alone would ensure that the AF would never have an aircrew available to fly an airplane off the boat. In the Navy "Sir, the E-2 ATO line is delayed for the next 12 hours because the aircrew's crew rest was violated by maintenance and a fire drill." would probably get the E-2 OpsO or Skipper fired. In the AF, it gets the base commander fired. (Which happened recently at a place that the E-3 deploys out of.)

I’m not asking about differences between services’ crew rest policies. I’m asking if people have experienced general adherence for their own service’s policies.

 

[Brett327]

Aircrew scheduled to brief 10 hrs after their land time. In that case we obviously just shutdown airborne and full-auto into the line then skip the washes and paperworks to run home. There’s no work to do before the brief, even though we aren’t cowboys about planning, so we just roll in at brief time and revel in that rest. That also means the crew went from flying at night to flying/FCF during the day. I bet they’ll be back on the next night because that happens. All. The. Time.

I’m not complaining. We don’t complain. We just get it done until something bad happens, then we do a safety stand down, then we go right back to doing what we were doing.

Was this routine, or an outlier? When it did happen, was the CO making the decision? As best as you could tell, was proper ORM considered by the CO when CR was waived?

 

[insanebikerboy]

Can't remember the last time, if ever, I've heard of someone falling out of an event for crew rest being busted.

In the AF, you’ll get pulled off the flight and won’t be allowed to fly if you bust crew rest for anything. Crew rest is sacrosanct, and the only permissible thing is if your the AC and it’s mission related.

 

[insanebikerboy]

Fatigue was absolutely there, and we worked to make it “better” but no way an AF unit would’ve gotten that mission done with their strict adherence to rules.

There are pluses and minuses to that mindset, but having flown the AF program, and having flown the Navy, I’ll take Navy, even with our flaws.

That’s my point. In the Navy we just accepted it and dealt with it. If the AF was tasked to have supported the same mission as in your example, they’d have either said no or brought more jets and crews to make the timing work.

 

[Swanee]

I’m not asking about differences between services’ crew rest policies. I’m asking if people have experienced general adherence for their own service’s policies.

It's an apples to oranges comparison. And I still answered your question. The front office scheduled the day so their asses were covered if something bad happened, while your ass was hung out to dry- you either didn't plan, didn't prep, or you broke crew rest.

 

[Gatordev]

Was this routine, or an outlier? When it did happen, was the CO making the decision? As best as you could tell, was proper ORM considered by the CO when CR was waived?

I've seen it happen routinely for blocks of time. The CO was making the decision because he signed the flight schedule. ORM was considered because an ORM sheet was filled out, but there is no "waiver." It's just Ops getting things done in a time of <fill in whatever operational need was in play>.

 

[squorch2]

Making a flight schedule that breaks crew rest should get wing-level visibility (since it’s probably breaking wing SOP)

Same for CO signing off on excessive ORM waivers, less the breaking wing SOP part.

 

[MIDNJAC]

I've cancelled before due to crew rest, generally in scenarios like where I was the last event aboard late at night and USS boat donkeys started a gun shoot outside my stateroom 2-3 hours after I got to sleep, or something like that. Granted this was pretty rare, but nobody ever gave me shit when it happened. These are also scenarios where the squadron/ops etc scheduled correctly, but the boat demolished the plan like they do everything.

 

[loadtoad]

My experience in the Navy wasn't as bad as above for crew rest. I never had it broke, but it often was right at the minimum crew rest and max crew day it seemed.

I also never had the CO/XO pressure of landing late and having to be in early for meetings the next day. All of that was self induced and I think for most of the wardrooms I was in, that it was self induced for everybody. You always have the exceptions for a meeting that YOU can't miss, but by far and large that wasn't the norm. I also was a flight hours whore so if they wanted to schedule me to land at 0200 on Thursday and I KNOW I had a meeting on 0900 that I couldn't miss, I would still take the flight.

But can we talk about the REAL benefit of the USAF rules. Their Bottle to throttle rule! So gentlemanly. You can have a mimosa at brunch and still fly the night line. ?

 

[sevenhelmet]

Have people in Navy squadrons experienced a significant amount of deviations from crew rest policy? Just trying to get a sense about that, because that’s not something I’ve seen personally.

C2X/JTFX. It was always a goat-rope, I truly never want to do anything like that again.

Outside of that, I never saw crew rest violated unless the individual brought it on themselves. Any time I ran or worked in ops, I did my best to account for mission planning time, ground meetings, and the dreaded SFWT debriefs. You can't account for everything, but we flexed when we had to, and I can't recall crew rest ever being violated by the flight schedule. The few times it happened, I was unaware until later (crazy long debriefs, which was addressed), or it was individual decision-making (studying late, working out at weird times, etc.)