Originally Posted by
LBAflyer22
Alas your wrong. Crew position both ways. I don't get your math regards number of hotel rooms - simple put the crew go on one flight out, stay let's say 5 nights, on the 6th day they fly back after their standby duty. The new crew fly out on the 6th day ready for duty on the 7th day with another 5 day stay. I'm not sure how Jet2 work it I'm sure someone in the know will know.
TUI do have an aircraft in TFS which operates revenue flights for them. Surely having 2 aircraft, 1 standby to cover Canaries and Cape Verde, will be better for everyone. I don't think TUI do standby aircraft do they?
In your example on the 6th day the crew flying home can't operate a TFS-UK-TFS duty, and then position home, it's a 4 hour flight back after a 10 hour plus duty... would be an insanely long day. The company would run up against duty of care issues and BALPA would never allow it. In my company crews operating any duty over 14 hours are entitled to a hotel at base after landing, as there are safety (and company liability) concerns about driving home after being at work for that long. On the same day the crew flying down to TFS wouldn't have duty to operate much after a 4 hour positioning flight, for the same reason.
So in that example the aircraft is effectively grounded every week on the day the crews swap over. If that's how TUI do it, then it works for them. Or to fly the aircraft every day with positioning crew, on the changeover day you need 2 sets of hotel rooms, 2 sets of crew, and 2 seats of seats that can't be sold every time a crew positions out/back.
But I'd assumed they'd want to utilize the aircraft every day, hence why I thought the company would have taken the operationally simpler approach of just swapping out crew at a UK airport. No FDP issues... single sector for each crew plus ground transport, no seats left unsold for crew, no crossover of hotel rooms, full coverage to fly aircraft every day.