Originally Posted by
Psychiatrist
i've had lots of arguments with my medical friends over this - when you have surgeons doing 100+ hours per week (in public hospitals in HK), often working 36 hour shifts with no sleep .... why do pilots and flight attendants have such long breaks between longhaul flights and why is there a strict limit on the number of hours they work? the only thing i can say is that you can always find other doctors to help out (in a hospital setting), whereas there's nobody to call upon when you're up in the air ...
^
In the worst case, if a surgeon made a mistake, one patient died. For flight crew, we are talking about the life of 300+ passengers and crews. The work involved during descend and approach is tremendous. I don't want the pilot of my flight become fatigue after 20+ hours of duty.
A line must be drawn somewhere. If the duty hour can be extended, should it be 1, 2, or 3 hours?
Sometime we just have to live with all these regulations, guidelines, legal requirements, no matter how ridiculous they look.