Mining rotation schedules: 14/14, 21/7, and FIFO

What's the difference between 14/14 and 21/7?

The most common patterns are 14 days on / 14 days off (14/14) and 21 days on / 7 days off (21/7), though the exact schedule depends on the mine, role, and whether you're camp-based or living in the mining town itself. "On" days are typically 10- or 12-hour shifts, which leaves limited time for anything besides working, eating, and sleeping.

Camp or town?

Sudbury, Timmins, and Val-d'Or are established mining towns with real neighbourhoods, schools, and housing markets -- many workers there drive in and out from home rather than living in a camp. Remote operations like Red Lake and the Yellowknife-area diamond mines are a different setup entirely: fly-in fly-out camps with dorm-style or private rooms, a cafeteria, and shared recreation space, similar in structure to camps in other Canadian resource industries. Thompson (Manitoba) and the Flin Flon area (Manitoba/Saskatchewan) sit somewhere in between, with a mix of town-based and camp-based arrangements depending on the specific operation.

Fly-in fly-out (FIFO)

FIFO means living somewhere else and flying to site for each rotation instead of relocating. Many remote-site employers cover or subsidize flights from set departure cities (2025 estimate, unconfirmed). FIFO adds travel days and airport time to each rotation, which changes how much of your "days off" are actually usable once travel is factored in.

Downtime underground and in camp

There's no cell or WiFi signal underground itself -- connectivity is strictly a surface and camp question. Above ground, camp WiFi is shared infrastructure serving everyone on site, so it's noticeably slower during peak evening hours when most of camp is off shift (2025 estimate, unconfirmed). Off-shift downtime in camp is mostly the gym, the rec room, video games, movies, and phone calls home; in a town-based rotation, workers have the same access to normal town life as anyone else on their days off.