Number of crews required

[OPSMAD]

Someone once told me that there is a simple formula to work out how many crew sets you would need for a particular programme. Does anybody know of one or do you have your own technique that you might be willing to share. I'm also interested to know what the ratio of trainingh Capts to crew should be?
Thanks in advance for your help.
OM

[Mr Angry from Purley]

OPSMAD
Depends on the flying programme, if it's daily to PMI 7 days a week you could manage with 2 crews, if its daily to Sydney then its more.

In general terms, UK Airline

Charter 6-7 crews
Loco 5 ish
Night frieght 3.5
Long Haul 8+
The formula normally involves working out how many days in a year, less days off, leave, sim and courses, bit of sickness. Then you have a number of working days left. Then its down to the flying programme, the dreaded word to Accountable Managers is then standbys, they don't want any, you want some. Then when a final figure is decided the beancounters will chop it by 10%.
TC's - never enough of them when you need em, my Airline is aprox 1 TRE to 4 aircraft but everyones different. TRE counts as 50% of a head so 50% line and 50% training, that's the most important bit to factor them in (between 25-75%)
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[Roster Change]

Take the number of duties per week, including SBY cover, and divide by 4. This will give you the required sets of crew required. So if the figure comes out at 5, double it, 5 Capt and 5 F/O's.
Training Capt's are 2 for 1

Current Airline I am working for, divide the weekly duties by 4.198, but that is really knitpicking it.