I admire you wishing to defend your aircrew colleagues Tightslot, but to me the entire episode looks like a typical UNITED fiasco of the time. Experienced one or two myself during those years. And, if FM's account is correct, the crew were for sure on duty more than 12:45 hours! Well in excess of 20 hours I'd say. That said, I'm not personally convinced that the FD crew were the original crew. It may well have been that it was only the cabin crew who stayed on for the IAD-SFO sector.