And Sailing let me be clear on why I bring this up, the eyeball test says 2 pilots (A+B) fly transcon and go to hotel. Two other pilots (A+B) fly the jet back. 4 pilots required to do the two turns (2 A and 2 B).
If you can augment then you fly 1 crew (A+B+B) on the transcon and then they fly it home. (1 A and 2 B). You see 7 flights (ATL-SFO example) where you have 3 pilots. I see a decrease in the need to stage fewer pilots for an overnight.
Yes it absolutely is more block hours. But not all block hours are equal. NWA flew 4 man trips with 1 CA and 3 FOs and then swapped to 2 CA and 2 FOs requiring a lot of new 744 As. Big difference between the two and my hunch is the unique network scheduling issues with transcons means more (as you said below) double crews.
Originally Posted by
sailingfun
As I posted there are some limited situations where it might make sense in the Central America/Carib or NRT market. Many of our competitors did Carib turns augmented in markets they only flew a few days a week. We double crewed those because our contract required it. It's still not likely we will see much of that because the contract requires a rest seat.
We double crewed by overnighting a second crew vs CAL who flew 737s down with a 3 man crew. I had friends who did it. Hated it. But if I understand you correctly double crews means 4 pilots required to do something vs 3 with an augmented crew.