Thanks for that Helinut. Please forgive my ignorance but I am even more confused now.
Surely if JAR FCL defines flight time for FCL purposes, then operators should work to that also. I may have mis-understood you, but I think you are sying that despite what JAR FCL says, operators have the right to decide what they consider is flight time logging for crews (and I am talking crews logbooks here rather than what is calculated for passenger fares or charges to clients).
Surely operators who work to JAR are not allowed to reduce what the authority has decreed? I can accept that they can make them more stringent, although I don't know of a commercial operator that would necessarily want to do that.
BHPS