Originally Posted by joepilot

At my airline you used to have to opt in. Then for awhile it was opt out.

Another item, not all airplanes at each airline are necessarily part of the CRAF fleet.

Generally, this is decided at the time the airline acquires the aircraft. The military generally wants certain things that an airline would frequently omit from an aircraft order, such as strengthened floors and possibly heavier gross weight, that would not be practical to install later. In general the USAF pays a negotiated fee up front for these modifications on the assembly line, and an ongoing fuel surcharge to compensate the airline for the increased fuel consumption from the higher empty weight.

Some aircraft, particularly those acquired used from a foreign airline may not meet the military's needs, and thus would be excluded from the CRAF.

When the military decides that it needs to activate CRAF, then the military has control of those aircraft. In general the military prefers that the usual airline pilots fly their company's planes. If, however, the company cannot produce enough pilots willing and able to fly the flights that the military wants flown, then the military can use any pilots that they choose. They could even assign Delta 737s to American to fly, if American has enough surplus pilots.

As far as I know, actual CRAF has never been invoked, but the threat is always there, so the airlines are quite happy to charter planes to the military.

The military does a great deal of chartering airliners. Many pilots referred to charters flying into Kuwait and Afghanistan supporting the military as CRAF flying, but it was not. It was just "normal" charter work.

Joe