Originally Posted by
Joachim
You are not completely correct. Principally the Relief captain was not a senior FO. As per the manual the RC was to be in command whenever the Commander/P1 was off duty. The time logged as such was PIC-US (under supervision). To muddy the waters further many commanders were EX-KLM, Virgin, Emirates etc. and had a tendency to implement whatever structure they were familiar with prior and therefore did not actually treat RCA’s as intended. This made for some interesting situations especially with the KLM types (think stereotypical Naval aviator attitude) and autocratic Emirates guys with their sandbox CRM. It was a dung show at times.
Relief Captains were not line checked, or PC'd as captains. It was an internal designation and they had to go through the upgrade evaluation and process to become captains. Yes, RCA's could log P1/US, but not P1 time, meaning in the true sense of the word, they were not captains.