Unfortunately for you guys out of EWR having the slightly longer duty day to get back home really puts you close on the duty limits.

Your PVG-EWR leg has a 15:55 duty day, and with a short layover (making you not acclimated) you only have a 1630 duty limit, so 35 minutes of headroom.

Your PEK-EWR leg has a 15:10 duty day, so that would only have headroom of 1:20.

Obviously, if they aren't willing to go for 2 hours of headroom for us ORD folks in PEK, going to only 1:20 for you guys is going to be a really tough sell!

Don't get me wrong, I would totally support any effort we have to get these as three day trips, but I know that is going to require some consistent data that supports it before the company will make a change.

Silos don't help us here, as I am sure the extra hotel costs aren't in Flight Ops' budget, but delays and cancels get them in hot water. So, they are under pressure to protect the operation but not under pressure to keep hotel costs low!