I've been here 25+ years and have never seen nor heard of them being used at DL.

So if you go a few days on long call without being assigned a trip, the length of trip they can legally assign you gets shorter and shorter, right? IOW, if you sit 4 days of long call, they can't then assign a 4-day trip. Unless it happens to have a 30 hr layover in the middle. I have 10 RES days in a row the end of July, so I guess I'll find out.

Yes. Now it's a hard 16:30, but it can be manipulated. The old 16 hour thing of the past could also be manipulated though I suppose. We had our contractual maximum to protect us though. Unfortunately, we gave it away. It seems our contractual maximum is almost always more restrictive than the new FARs because it includes our 30 minute post flight while the FTD ends at blockin.

Crowne
 

I just stayed at the Crowne. They've been working on the elevators there forever, and they are still not programmed correctly. They stop at floors with no people, go up when they should go down, etc. It was very frustrating during busy parts of the day (to/from work). I would avoid it, at least for the near term.

Actually I was not happy about adopting the FAR 117 FDP tables until I read the LOA and talked to the union about the paragraph below:

It is within the sole discretion of each individual pilot to decide in any given situation whether he is fit for duty and will remain on duty beyond his applicable FDP or duty period limit under Section 12 D. 2. – 4. A pilot’s decision not to remain on duty beyond such limit will be accepted without challenge by Crew Tracking.

So the max duty period in the FAR 117 table (domestically) is 14 hours. That is when you can pull the plug and not be questioned about it. In our PWA a duty period could be built to 13 hours and the company could involuntarily extend you to 15 hours then you could pull the plug before whitlow at 16 hours which is what the company would try to extend your duty day to. So you can actually pull the plug earlier. As someone pointed out these duty times and our 5:15 don't get phased in until November.

The max FDP is 14:00 only for a report 0700-1159 and only if there are one or two landings in the FDP. That's extendable to 16:00 (16:30 with the release) with the crew's concurrence, and only once between 30-hour rest periods. Extend any FDP by as much as :31 past its limit and you can then extend another by only :30 until you've had a 30-hour rest.

What do you mean when you say that these extension limits can be manipulated?

Disregard.

I dont follow... sorry... I thought if you start a 10 day block on Monday, they have to give you rest at 8pm Saturday to 0000 Monday and couldn't give you a trip that, say, signed in on Friday and released on Sunday? Is that incorrect? Can you explain what happens using this example?

All B lines are finally out. No back dooring needed.

Not quite. You can be assigned an FDP that reports as late as 2000 on Saturday since, at that point, you can still look back and find 30 hours of rest in the previous 168.