Originally Posted by
Gulfasaurus
At DL you show up to the briefing. The CA will normally ask if anyone is about to expire currency and needs a landing. Or they already know because they looked it up from the rotation details. Then it normally goes something along the lines of "I'll fly us over, you guys decide who wants to fly back". If nobody speaks up or they can't decide, it often ends up going to a coin toss. The PF of the return leg does relief on the outbound, and the PM on the outbound does relief coming back.
This is what usually happens. As someone who bids reserve and is mostly on the domestic pain train getting plenty of landings, if I get assigned a Europe I usually send out a text saying “hey I don’t need any landings, Bill you’re most senior, Fly there/Fly Back/Relief? then let the other pilot pick what he wants to do. Figured most FOs don’t get many landings actually IN Europe. This also helps us plan our rest better the day before, as the flying pilot usually gets second break.
But most of the time for guys who do purely 3 day Europe the captain takes first leg I find, with some exceptions, then lets the FOs decide who takes it back.