Originally Posted by
Flyhighfirst
If it is as claimed the originating crew went out of hours (for whatever reason) and they had to wait for a standby crew then that would most likely be eligible for a claim. It is solely in the companies responsibility to have adequate standby crew on hand to minimise disruptions. Obviously this can’t always happen but they are still liable.
That is absolutely not the case, airlines do not have 2 full crews for every flight, nor are they required to by regulation. There are lots of reasons why a crew will go out of hours way beyond the control of any airline; weather, strikes, ATC problems, airport systems failures, passenger issues... and thus crew going out of hours in no way infers any liability under EU-261.
If the original crew are going to go out of hours, the new crew have a contracted callout time to get to the airport, plus a standard report time... so from call to actual departure for a standby crew will be in the region of 3 hours generally. Quicker if they are on airport standby, but that presents challenges in itself, as because it's at the airport, the crew have reported at some point in the past and their duty clocks are ticking. Which makes airport standby unviable, and so not used, for most longer duties/flights.