Originally Posted by
Airbubba
Some airlines allow two captains to fly together under some circumstances so all captains are theoretically trained to fly in the right seat. I was never keen on this concept even though the guy in the right seat usually got hefty premium pay under our contract. The few times I ended up in the right seat as a captain I agreed to buy dinner if the colleague in the left seat would make all the landings.
We had an F/O doing upgrade assessment ( usually done from his normal position- the right seat ) . This particular training Captain decided to put him in the left seat for some of the sectors . Rather brave , as that particular mark of the 76 had no nosewheel steering tiller on the right side . Of course , this news got back to Fleet Office pdq and said Captain found himself warming the right seat permanently for another year while he served out his demotion .
On later outfits with the arrival of long range flights and augmented crew , it was normal to have 2 Capts and 1 F/O on some sectors . Actually preferred this to the other option used when we would have 1 Capt and 2 F/O's , one being a "cruise Captain" . Never really felt comfortable being back in the bunk with 2 other guys in charge of a ship with my signature in the logbook .
Agreed , right seat ops in the 2 Captain scenario was never comfortable either . You had to do a right seat check in the bi-annual sim , ( not something we looked forward to ; V1 cuts and manual approach to minimums and an engine out G/A flown from a strange seat always required a lot of work remembering which hands and feet did what .. It was also a fail item if you didn't get it quite right , and some checkers didn't even let you have a practice beforehand ; " not enough sim time left " was the usual excuse ).
Fortunately , the powers that be decided that we were not allowed to land from the RHS on actual ops unless you were a qualified training Captain . No arguments with that
.