Originally Posted by sydney s/h
Here's an example. The flight was delayed out of Melbourne to Narita a few weeks ago - an A330-300.
The LH crew weren't going to achieve their required rest break (just short) in NRT.
They try and negotiate with the LH crew. They say nope.
Phone calls are made to SH crew on home reserve. Paxed up to NRT, day rest and bring back the aircraft.
2 things here -
1. you have to be flexible sometimes to help yourselves in the long term
2. Before you bag the SH crew - The SH crew had no choice. They were on home reserve, they had to legally answer their phone and were within hours to operate.
And there you go. Before you know it SH are now doing NRT flights as of March. Big hour 6 day trips. And very popular.
While I agree with you that in L/H we do need to be flexible, this example you have given is not representative of inflexibility, and it did not result in S/H doing Naritas. (S/H is only doing MEL-NRT-MEL and this is only due to the shortage in the MEL L/H base which SYD L/H have been covering)
On occasions like this when there is disruption, operations tend to give the operating crew the option to continue with their original duty, especially when a change to the pattern would extend the days of the duty and thus get the crew home a day late.
In the delay in question, one option presented to the crew was to take minimum rest in Narita and get home as scheduled, and the duty was to be treated as a continuous one (lots of overtime), from sign on in MEL till sign off in SYD.
It was only an option given, not a request, and was probably declined as the crew in question did not consider that amount of rest to warrant the extra money or the fact that they would probably get home a day late.
The S/H crew that were called out, paxed to NRT had 12 hrs off and operated back to SYD, slightly easier than if the L/H crew had operated a delayed service, had less than 12 hrs off, and then operated back to SYD.