It is quite simple really. A few years ago, Emirates employed the dubious practice of not applying time as a crewmember spent in the bunk towards flight time and duty limitations. This was known as factoring. The result was that when in a 4 man crew, only half of your block time counted towards your flight time limitations. This meant that some guys on the A340 were flying up to 140 hours per month. The practice was discontinued when the GCAA found out about it. (It seems that the company used a letter from the GCAA that stated that time in the bunk was not to be logged as there were total time requirements for upgrade)

Last Thursday at the close of business (our Thursday is like your Friday), the company released a notice letting us know that factoring would be coming back. It wasn't their fault though. They had been found non-compliant by the GCAA and were being forced to do this. In the new version, only the augmenting crew will have to "factor" their time.

The reality is that there is absolutely nothing the crews here can do other than refuse to fly the 120 hour rosters that are in our future. Of course, we are so short of crews, this is the only way that the company can crew the flights in the coming months.