Originally Posted by gloopy

Has anyone cyphered the total number of additional required staffing, if any, for DL WRT to the new rules?

The rules will be what they will be, but there are 2 different possibilities: keeping the current contractual 2/3/4 man block hour limits versus sliding that grid one hour forward WRT the FT/DT changes.

I really don't see much of an advantage to the company to push deeper into Europe, etc with the extra hour of 2 man ops if the no exceptions "must be legal at throttle up" concept remains part of the final rules. I do see the company pushing for relief for narrowbody ops though, particularly high cycle hub flying i.e. 717/88/320/etc. If a crew starts to overblock they can always replace them at a hub with minimal risk to the operation. Trying to get 8:01-8:59 2 man to Europe or back with varying headwinds (giggity), etc and a taxi out delay of as little as 1 minute up to 59 minutes would mean a messy cancellation/gate return and the real world would quickly outstrip the fancy spreadsheet benefits on paper.

Unless they overblocked to protect against that. But if they did that, they would eliminate the efficiencies they were trying to gain in the first place.

I assume the company will approach us for this, and I assume we will seriously consider giving them that concession. We will of course want "something" for it, but IMO since there is no way they will offer anything of equal or greater value (otherwise they gain nothing) we would be selling some degree of safety, even if its small, in exchange for something else. I hope we don't go down that road. Honestly, I hope the company doesn't even ask.