Narrative:

This report is about fatigue and safety. I am a B737 captain on reserve and have worked 16 out of the last 21 days. I am currently at about 80 hours of credit time for the month. A lot of this flying was in winter operations involving deicing; ground delays; holding in-flight and a diversion. As you know; words cannot explain the fatigue involved with this type of flying. I had just finished a 4 day trip with one of the days at 13 hours 53 minutes on duty and again this trip involving winter operations. Crew scheduling assigned me an XC00 field standby for the next day and at this point I was good for 2 days. Because of wintry roads; the drive to airport took me twice as long. I allowed enough time for this and was in operation around XA00. At XE20; the first officer called asking where I was and the gate agent was ready to close the airplane door. No one had advised me of this assignment. I called crew scheduling and they admitted failing to assign me the trip. This 2 day trip showed departing at XD18 ZZZ-ZZZ1 with a very short turn; ZZZ1-ZZZ2 with very short turn and a plane change; ZZZ2-ZZZ3 and I was not assigned this trip until XD30 so realistically the departure would not be until XE00. From my estimate; we would not be getting to ZZZ3 until XN00 central time in the morning. At this point I would have been awake 20 hours. Being proactive; I call the flight duty manager and explained that the flight from ZZZ2-ZZZ3 there would be a high probability I would be fatigued and not fit to safely fly that segment. On the flight from ZZZ to ZZZ1 we were advised that we will misconnect in ZZZ2 and would be deadheading home the next day. The crew scheduling asked if we would deadhead on the XM00 flight the next day and this would give us minimum layover at the hotel. We both agreed to this because of the deadhead home. It turns out we had under 8 hours at the hotel. On the deadhead flight I was advised to call crew scheduling when we landed. They assigned me ZZZ-ZZZ4; ZZZ4-ZZZ. I advised them I accepted minimum rest at hotel based on just deadheading home. They said I was the only one available to fly this trip. With less than 8 hours at the hotel; all that has taken place in the last 6 days of flying and this would put me at about 32 hours credit time in 7 days. At this point I was totally exhausted and told crew scheduling that I was fatigued and could not safely fly this trip. Crew scheduling took me off the reassignment. In conclusion of this; I see a lot of red flags that could have potentially led to an unsafe situation.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: B737 reserve Captain reports an extremely fatiguing month; with weather delays; diversions; and rescheduled trips. This results in a fatigue call to crew scheduling after a less than minimum rest over night.

Narrative: This report is about fatigue and safety. I am a B737 Captain on reserve and have worked 16 out of the last 21 days. I am currently at about 80 hours of credit time for the month. A lot of this flying was in winter OPS involving deicing; ground delays; holding in-flight and a diversion. As you know; words cannot explain the fatigue involved with this type of flying. I had just finished a 4 day trip with one of the days at 13 hours 53 minutes on duty and again this trip involving winter OPS. Crew scheduling assigned me an XC00 field standby for the next day and at this point I was good for 2 days. Because of wintry roads; the drive to airport took me twice as long. I allowed enough time for this and was in OP around XA00. At XE20; the First Officer called asking where I was and the gate agent was ready to close the airplane door. No one had advised me of this assignment. I called crew scheduling and they admitted failing to assign me the trip. This 2 day trip showed departing at XD18 ZZZ-ZZZ1 with a very short turn; ZZZ1-ZZZ2 with very short turn and a plane change; ZZZ2-ZZZ3 and I was not assigned this trip until XD30 so realistically the departure would not be until XE00. From my estimate; we would not be getting to ZZZ3 until XN00 Central time in the morning. At this point I would have been awake 20 hours. Being proactive; I call the Flight Duty Manager and explained that the flight from ZZZ2-ZZZ3 there would be a high probability I would be fatigued and not fit to safely fly that segment. On the flight from ZZZ to ZZZ1 we were advised that we will misconnect in ZZZ2 and would be deadheading home the next day. The crew scheduling asked if we would deadhead on the XM00 flight the next day and this would give us minimum layover at the hotel. We both agreed to this because of the deadhead home. It turns out we had under 8 hours at the hotel. On the deadhead flight I was advised to call crew scheduling when we landed. They assigned me ZZZ-ZZZ4; ZZZ4-ZZZ. I advised them I accepted minimum rest at hotel based on just deadheading home. They said I was the only one available to fly this trip. With less than 8 hours at the hotel; all that has taken place in the last 6 days of flying and this would put me at about 32 hours credit time in 7 days. At this point I was totally exhausted and told crew scheduling that I was fatigued and could not safely fly this trip. Crew scheduling took me off the reassignment. In conclusion of this; I see a lot of red flags that could have potentially led to an unsafe situation.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of May 2009 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.