I agree, to a point. I see some Captains with a blanket "no RFO gets a landing" policy when common sense may dictate otherwise. The fact the RFO is a 8XXXXX number and on reserve/VTOs doesn't come into play with some of these guys. I agree, if the RFO is senior enough to manage his schedule and can obviously bid flying trips then maybe a question as to why they're short on landings may be in order.

This bit me when I was on the -11. I had a 60+ day military deployment which left me close on landings. The month I got back, of course, I get a custom line, and we all know how good they are. Reserve... RFO trip. I need a landing to avoid going to the sim and losing a flying trip the following month. I RFO out to Asia with a captain, and I was telling him my story. It turns out, I was RFOing with him at the end of the trip back to the States. He said he'd give me the leg back. Well, the next week comes along, and we're getting off the bus at the jet and I mention to him, "remember you said you'd let me have the leg back?" He looked at me and with disgust said "oh... you want the landing?" I said "yeah, back in XXX you said I could have the leg back." "We'll see..." he says.

I get up to the cockpit after the walkaround, and he basically tosses the release at me and says "weather's getting bad in XXX, I'm taking the leg." I look at the forecast 1500 OVC/3 miles. Really? If you don't want me to have the landing, just say so... don't make up some weather BS just because you don't have the balls to tell me no.

When we get to XXX clear and a million. Does he offer me the landing? Nope. He did offer me his hand when we were parting ways. He got a "whatever" and a view of my back. He's the only guy that was on my no-fly-list. Dick.

Later I looked at my calendar for the previous 12 months. I had one, count 'em, one, RFO trip.