crewdawg

Ya but don't think they won't try to get away with 2 pilot crews when they can. I never experienced it as a scheduled trip, but did have it happen when the other FO got sick in Europe. We flew to BOS as a 2 mam crew to pick up a new crew to finish the trip. I'm sure they'll try, have it bite them, and try again lol.

GivemeVSP

Why does the flight have to depart at 10am? What’s keeping management from adjusting it to a 1 or 2pm departure? They could easily do that with the number of departures per day out of these places. Just send ATL back early with the 3 man crew.

iaflyer

Network connections. Also, there are already 3 flights a day CDG-ATL on Delta (9am, noon and 4pm), so along with 3 that AF flies (10:30, 2pm and 5:30pm, they are scattered throughout the day.

Gone Flying

1)spare crews are a lot easier to find and get into place in the US
2) there are not steep fines for controllable delays within the US.

they may try, but what I was responding to is why flights currently on the schedule for less than 8 block are still scheduled with 3 pilots.

Gone Flying

it does not have to, and I have flow DUB-BOS as a 2 pilot crew and it was scheduled for the afternoon for that reason. But typically flights leave Europe earlier than that for BOS/JFK.

Any flight that leaves mainland EU before 12:30pm or the British isles before 11:30am is going to have little to no room for delay if flown 2 pilot, and therefore will probably be flown with 3 even if under 8 block on the return flight

sailingfun

What you have listed is correct. The duty day limit is a issue. When 117 first came out we flew most of the UK with two man crews. 117 changed the block limit from 8 to 9 and the forum panicked that most of Europe would be two man crews. Reliability would have dropped. The actual result of 117 was we have more not less 3 man crews. We do however have two man crews on some BOS flights. I am sure the company can run a flight history on each route and quickly figure out if a two man crew will work. Currently CDG is blocked at 8:00 so legal for two contractually. Any delays however would result in a duty day timeout. Until the 330 base in BOS gets fully staffed and running no one here knows. If they do staff with 3 another issue is will they dispatch with two if a FO calls out sick or has a commute failure. Not sure how that might work contractually. I did once have a FO pulled from my BOS flight in Europe to cover a sick FO on the ATL flight and was told it was legal.

Red Swingline

They have departure screens for next summer up already?

“A quick look at next summer for dtw…”

NWA4LIFE

its pretty top secret -I go on travelnet and look as far out as it can go and type in the city

iaflyer

Well I did miss the "next" summer part, but really, DTW doesn't add much in the way of int'l flights. It's been a looong time since a new European destination has been added on the Int'l side. I think Munich was the last one, and that was added in 2016.

Hotel Kilo

More or less. That's why I posted earlier maybe BOS-LHR-BOS might get away with 2 person crew. The rest most likely not.

They know the stats. I don't see many of the BOS-XXX-BOS trips (maybe other than LHR) being anything but 3 person crews. Especially wintertime heading west bound. I guess we'll see soon enough once they start constructing the bid packs for BOS originating flights.