The confusing part of fly-in fly-out rosters is the shorthand, not the schedule. On the long rotations the numbers count weeks: a 2 and 1 is two weeks on and one week off. On the short ones they count days: an 8 and 6 is eight days on and six days off. Same notation, different unit, and nobody writes down which.
We make Lumical, an app that scans work rosters into your calendar, so read this with that in mind. Everything below is cycle math you can check against our free shift pattern visualizer.
The four common rosters
| Written | In days | Cycle | Hours a week |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 and 1 | 14 on, 7 off | 21 days | 56 |
| 2 and 2 | 14 on, 14 off | 28 days | 42 |
| 3 and 1 | 21 on, 7 off | 28 days | 63 |
| 8 and 6 | 8 on, 6 off | 14 days | 48 |
Hours a week assume 12 hour shifts every day of the swing, which is the standard on site. The figure is a cycle average, not a real week: on swing you work 84 hours, at home you work none.
What each one costs you
2 and 2 is the even time roster, and it is the only one that puts you at home half the year. Offshore platforms and remote camps run it because the trip in is expensive and a fortnight makes it worth the journey. The 14 on 14 off calendar shows the shape: two weeks solid, two weeks clear, all year.
2 and 1 is the money roster. Two thirds of the year on site, a 56 hour cycle average, and the shortest recovery of the four. Australian mining runs a lot of it. See the 14 on 7 off calendar.
3 and 1 is what you run when the journey is long enough that a shorter swing would be spent travelling. Three quarters of the year on site. It is the hardest of the four on anyone at home, and the one fatigue researchers flag most often. The 21 on 7 off calendar lays it out.
8 and 6 is the balance roster. Eight days is short enough that you are still sharp on the last one, and six days off is long enough to be a real break. Australian FIFO surveys keep naming it as the best of the four for life at home. Here is the 8 on 6 off calendar.
The weekday trap
All four cycles divide evenly into whole weeks: 21, 28, 28 and 14 days. That means they never drift. Whatever weekdays your swing covers in January, it covers in December, and the crew on the opposite phase gets the mirror image of your year. On a 2 and 2 one crew can take almost every weekend home and the other almost none, for as long as the roster holds.
That is the opposite of a rotation like 4 on 4 off, whose 8 day cycle slides through the week and hands every crew a similar year. If weekends matter to you on a FIFO roster, the question is which crew you are on, not which roster it is.
Travel days are not in the calendar
None of these calendars show travel. A swing that reads 14 on 14 off can mean flying out the evening before day one and getting home late on the day after day fourteen, which quietly takes two days off the block at home. Some sites count travel as work time and some do not. Check the roster document, not the shorthand.
Fatigue, honestly
Twelve hour shifts every day for two or three weeks is a lot, and the research on long swings is not kind: sleep debt accumulates across the block, and the last days of a long swing are where the incident rates sit. The rosters with the longest blocks pay the most for exactly that reason. None of this is an argument against FIFO work. It is an argument for knowing which roster you signed, and for treating the first days at home as recovery rather than as spare time.
Put your swing in your calendar
Every roster above has a calendar page for 2026, 2027 and 2028, with the full year on real dates and a file you can import in one go. Start at the shift patterns hub or go straight to 14 on 14 off, 14 on 7 off, 21 on 7 off or 8 on 6 off.
If the roster you actually work arrives as a photo of a spreadsheet, with swaps and cover already written in, get Lumical on the App Store and put the whole swing in Apple Calendar from that picture.