I've done both the un-uagmented EWR-LHR (76T) and many HNL red eyes (756 and 777). Atlantic un-augmented is exponentially worse than the Hawaii ops.

If pilots would stop flying barber pole speeds on the return legs (fly the FP) we wouldn’t be running into this issue for most of the Western Europe destinations. We only have ourselves to blame for get home itus to make a commute. If pilots don’t wake up soon we will be flying unaugmented to/from IAD/EWR to BRU, CDG, AMS... just like LHR and Ireland.

This...
We voted in that -

5-E-10-b-(2) All Night Flying (“ANF”) means a flight segment, any portion of which, scheduled to operate from 0230 to 0329


So now that the 78's will be coming to EWR (already in IAD) I can see them doing EWR-BRU/AMS/CDG/LHR as 2 man crews. Plane flies at .85ish and if they can, they will...

Personally, anything going ETOPS that flies from 2200-0600 local base time should be considered ANF and be flown with 3 man. But we gave the company an out and they are just following what the Contract states.

Crazy/Sad that there is a EWR-LHR trip that leaves in the evening that is crewed as a 2 man, while the pairing before and after goes out as 3 man.
IF the 78 (-8?) replaces those 2 LHR trips, they will (probably) also be flown as 2 man crews.
How many pilots do we lose when we start to replace a .80 aircraft with a .85 aircraft?
It's the little things~

Oh well, we'll get them next time (LOL)
Contract 2020?

Always
Motch

The original recommendations made by ALPA to 117 were that ALL crossings should have a 3 person crew minimum. It's probably for ALPA to light that up again.

But.. getting back to the bid.
Yupe, EWR756 Capt going senior AND lots of outside movement coming in..
Know a bunch of senior 756FO's who are still trying/waiting to slide into the left seat.
Guess not.

Sucks.

Got to wonder what the 787 bid will mean now~

Motch

Dude...

That EWR 756 Ca bid is beyond serious senior. It’s brain dead. That level of senior on the 756 just doesn’t make sense!

It does when you compare the DCA and ORD bid packages to EWR.

It’s not just EWR. Look at us in IAH. Some of the old dug in ticks on the Guppy are finally upgrading here as well. Only 100 systemwide numbers between the JR MAN in EWR vs IAH on the snapshot. And we lost our -400 flying a long time ago!

Oh I see it. But it still doesn’t make sense. Other than the Guppy is a sorry POS to fly, because there is no financial incentive to bid the 756.

If you can hold 767-400 lines there is.

Sure but they don’t exist in EWR or IAH.

Why? Specifics, please.

I've flown both Atlantic and Pacific. I see no reason why crossing the Atlantic is harder than crossing the Pacific.

Especially when the sun comes up and then things start getting busy. Vectors, holding...ugh.

And it leaves later. Don’t understand that. I’m sure some of the EWR 756 pilots will be happy to see LHR go to 787. A buddy of mine’s line for Aug has 5 LHRs! Of course he was chasing the -400. But not every trip on -400.

After years of going up and down multiple times a day on either a 737 or 320, I can see where the 756 looks attractive. Commutable trips and 8 legs a month rather than 8 legs per trip. Not much financial incentive, but a lot less work.

But have you flown LHR un-augmented? I have.

1) Math. Hawaii is barely 5 hours. EWR-LHR is 2.5 to 3 hours LONGER.

2) LAX-HNL is all daylight. EWR-LHR isn't. The HNL-LAX red eye is all dark but often go's under 5 hours.

3) You don't spend and hour and a half to get to the hotel in HNL like you do in LHR.

4) Getting in and out of LAX and HNL is much free flowing and getting out of EWR and LHR.

5) On EWR-LHR you're crossing twice as many time zones as you do LAX-HNL.

6) There's many more reasons why but I have to go commute soon.

All this talk of LAX-HNL... Least we forget HNL-DEN unagumented. There's hell for you.

The only place they fly out of is EWR, that’s why all the senior guys flooded in there- chasing widebody pay.

My last three Hawaii trips were 6 to 6.5 with all night back right at 6. That's flight time. Add another hour from push sitting in that 737 7.5 hours.



DEN to LIH is 7:45

From where? LAX HNL and HNL LAX are both blocked at less than 6 hours from what I’m looking at in the bid packages. SFO is even shorter. And at 5 hours in a 756 or 777.

Anyway, the reason I brought up the point of the 787 being able to do more Europe un-augmented wasn’t to start a conversation about which trips are tougher in each airplane from other domiciles. The point was that some routes that now require three pilots may only require two when EWR 787 opens which can be more tiring and require less pilots.

Forgive me....I'm a bit of a lurker here because my son is one of you.

None of you really know what hell is. Nine years ago I was pushing metal for Air India flying the 777 and one of my frequent routes was FRA to ORD. My copilot (if you can call him/her that) was typically 21 or 22 years old and had no more than 500 hours total time and Air India did not authorize/allow copilots to land the jet. Air India didn't augment until scheduled time went over 9:59 which it never did, so in the winter actual flight times were often well over 10 hours. BTW when you hear Air India check in with ORD approach I would give them a little extra room.

When you fly a 777 from FRA to ORD essentially by yourself in the middle of winter....only then....will you understand what real hell is.

But you’re missing the point of what Hoss and I were saying. IAH is within 100 number of EWR for JRM on the snapshots. And we lost our 400 flying years ago. So it’s not just that. Probably is why in EWR, but irrelevant to IAH and it’s gone just as senior as EWR. We even had spots last bid for IAH 756 and it went just as senior.

I think some people that have been waiting for a EWR 756 CA spot decided to just get on it and then try for EWR later.

I've done a lot of international flying unaugmented in my career. I don't find LHR to be particularly challenging, especially in a 787 with all of its automation; YMMV.
A typical LHR arrival would be a bit of holding then longazz vectors to final with a constant rate descent … 700 FPM was ballpark IIRC; 500-600 FPM to start would keep you safe. In tight trail of the plane in front of you where he's touching down when you're 500 ft AGL. Around that time, you'd get landing clearance. Rinse, repeat.

As far as unaugmented EWR-LHR flights, LCAL used to do the eastbound leg unaugmented. This wouldn't be anything new.

1) At what mach?
I just looked at my last two LAX-HNL-LAX IDs and all four flights were over 5 hrs. But they're a couple hours shorter than the unaugmented HNL-DEN flights which I've also flown.
A 787 is going to cruise at a higher mach than a 756 and a 777 so the flight time will be shorter.

I rarely flew HNL-LAX under 5 hrs in the 777; what plane were you flying that would do it under 5 on a regular basis?

2) LHR-EWR is also all daylight. Let's not get wrapped around the axle about day vs night because both IDs have all day and all night legs.

3) I usually used that bus ride to the hotel to sleep and the bus ride to LHR to download/look at the flight plan. What do you do on the bus ride?

4) How many times have you flown in/out of LHR? How many flights did it take for you to be fully familiar with LHR?
As for EWR, I'd hope that anyone based in EWR would be familiar with the airport.

5) I've never been sensitive to time zone changes so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.


I think you're grossly overestimating how junior EWR 787 would go if there were unaugmented Atlantic crossings.

I think you know that I’m not saying LHR in itself is challenging but you’re trying to make it sound like that’s my point. It is not. Flying back side of the clock across the Atlantic across four and five time zones with two pilots is more challenging and THAT is my point. I just used LHR as one example. This could spread to CDG, AMS, etc..

Well, as I previously stated, LCAL flew those transatlantic routes unaugmented. They'd deadhead a pilot eastbound (their contract paid deadheading less than on duty) and fly augmented back to EWR. So this isn't new ground.

Personally, I'd prefer to be the flying pilot rather than the Bunkie and I think most others feel the same way. I just don't see unaugmented transatlantic flights making the 787 go junior in EWR.

When I was a kid I had to walk to school uphill thru the snow 10 miles both ways. I didn’t have an iPhone to play with and there was no internet.

That my friends is real hell.

That was 20 years ago.

Swiss Air still does, btw. Fly it unaugmented.

What’s safer? What pays more? What’s easier? What creates more wodebody jobs? THREE GUYS. No reason to argue the company logic as to why or how we should do it.

I know a few gals that can do it just as well, even on a widebody.

Did 2-pilot EWR-LHR and LGW on the 777. Did not like it one bit. Having the third crewmember and a break, even if it was short, made all the difference.

I did IAD-LHR-IAD last summer unaugmented on the 787 a couple times and it sucked. Both flights coming back ended up blocking almost 9hrs.

Its amazing that a guy who flips burgers can’t be forced to work 8 hours straight without at least 4 breaks, but airline pilots can be forced to work that long with no break.

9 hours domestic daytime.

Forced?

Flipping burgers/ flying an airliner..... I can see the similarities::rolleyes:

😄

I see your Air India job and raise it with a crappy old DC-8 flying non sched international for 10 hours. Then doing a Pt 91 reposition for another 8 hours with no breaks, no food, no glass, no sel call, no GPS, and a narcoleptic/alcoholic/geriatric flight engineer with a bad attitude.

Or even worse. How about all of those 14-15 year old kids who grew up on a farm or family business and work 12 hour days, 6 or 7 days a week. One difference is that they don’t complain as much as pilots do. We get paid well and work in a comfortable, low stress environment. We have it so good that one of our biggest threats is boredom, complacency, and actually dozing off. Laying on the sarcasm pretty thick (a clue for the sarcastically challenged), but we get paid for what we know and what we can do when we have to. The normal day to day operation isn’t that big of a deal. Working an unaugmented 8 hour Atlantic crossing isn’t exactly the most demanding or exhausting task one can accomplish. 3-4 leg days on the narrow body fleet get pretty long too, but it still isn’t the end of the world. If complaining about monitoring the automation on an oceanic flight, especially with CPDLC, is what we are upset about, life is pretty good.

Same job, different plane. I was told “its international, you don’t need rest providing you don’t block over 12 hours of 121 time.” One freight outfit figured out that that the domestic rest requirement of 8 hours didn’t have to be continuous. As long as your breaks added up to 8 hours you were legal, and time spent in local transportation was part of your rest as the hotel van tried aimlessly to find the freight ramp. Oh the memories. Not enough booze in the bottle to wash away some of the past.

The contract only paid DH less than flying for a couple of years as part of the concessionairy contract. When the pay snapped back to 100%, CAL continued the DH East/IRO West for years (DH at blended rate was higher than the flying FO If it was a 757 trans-Atlantic trip) which allowed more soft time for senior FO’s who liked the DH stuff. Having worked a ton of these as well as having flown completely unaugmented Ireland/U.K/Portugal trips I’ll say it is rough when delayed and or weather plagued. Having the third set of eyes is a big help. Heck, California to Hawaii is nothing compared to North Atlantic un-augmented flying. I do Hawaii flying in a freaking 737 each month for pete’s sake.

Bingo. A delay changes the ballgame on an all nighter thats up to the unaugmented limits. Those Hawaii Denver redeyes are bruuuuuutal... Add a 3 hr delay for inbound aircraft, oh dear God.

I can honestly say that I’ve never missed ACMI non sched freight. Not one single time EVER!:)

100% agreed, in fact I’d venture to say that Hawaii Den is one of the most brutal red eyes we fly. It’s right up there with NRT/ SIN or BKK which was always unaugmented. Are we even doing those NRT tags anymore? They SUKKED!