Originally Posted by
sailingfun
The new rules would actually increase the FO's positions on the 7ER. Yes you can fly more hours before you have to carry the relief FO but the duty day limits if you are not acclimated are to short to allow that. Most of the current two man trips out of JFK will have to go to 3 pilots. The only way the company could avoid it would be to make them 4 day trips instead of 3. This might meet the acclimatization requirement but the increase in 1 for 3.5 credit would probably keep the company from going that route.
Regardless however I don't think this has anything to do with the new rest rules. This bid is to cover flying this summer long before the new rest rules will go into effect. Its not likely the company will even know what they will end up being by summer.
I hope you are right on that. Especially that most of the current 2 man trips will have to go to 3 man. While I knew there was some circadian protections in the proposal, I thought when I read them that those only applied to instances where you could redice below today's 3 or 4 man requirements. IOW, there would be some instances where you could reduce because of the time changes, but no times where you would have to add beyond today's required crew numbers.
As for the company pulling the AE to tweak based on F&DT rules that no one knows what they will be or when they will be it, other than a vague 3 year rollout, that seemed less than likely. Either that was total BS, or if there was any truth to it, the only reason I could see would be an impending ATA windfall.
So if this AE really is about covering summer flying, and we're not adding many if any pilots for the summer (even late spring/early summer hiring doesn't add line ready pilots for several months) then I wonder how this AE will shape up. Simply adding widebody positions (which I've heard will be the case) may be necessary, but even a tiny increase in summer flying over 2010 would have the narrowbody fleets bursting at the seams even with agressive green slips. Taking guys out of the narrowbodies to buff the widebody rosters would compound things even worse.
Just isn't adding up to me unless we hire and hire soon. Unless its just about a base alignment/transfer with no significant change. I guess we'll see next month.