Originally Posted by
DeadStick
I ended up refusing to fly the last leg because, in my understanding, legal to start legal to finish only applies when the schedule hasn't been modified. While I acknowledge that the RTG does not count as flight time in regard to scheduled limitations, I argued that at that point the schedule had been "modified" as a new city pairing had been added, and the pairing number went from "EX3000A" to "EX3000B".
I think you are confusing company internal information systems with "schedules".
The company pairing number does not matter. The fact that the RTG was "added" to your schedule does not matter, because it was really NOT added for FAA purposes. The RTG was not a "schedule change" it was an irregular operation, which are allowed under "legal to start"
Your original schedule involved two turns. That is what you actually flew, so nothing changed.
The gold standard for what constitutes a "schedule" change would be flying to different cities than originally planned, or flying different flight numbers.
An added leg AAA-CCC would have been a schedule change. If they canx the second AAA-BBB turn and had you instead fly a AAA-BBB turn with DIFFERENT flight numbers later in the day, that would be be a change.
The gold standard is flight numbers and city pairs.