I feel for the charter boys 'n' girls, I really do. I'm a scheduled short haul whack and I sometimes get a string of earlies which are not classed as earlies by one minute!
Unfortunately our company has always worked to cap 371 (and sometimes tried to pull the wool over our eyes and bent the rules!) A lot of the time you question their rosterring and they are correct but in my view cap 371 was not intended to be worked to ALL the time to within a minute.
For a while we were doing a Zurich which departed at 08:25L. Now we usually report 90minutes before a duty but for this particular duty (which incidentally may have been the start of a tour) they made us report at 07:00L just so that it wouldn't be classed as an early. Of course, the FOD and chief pilots never got rosterred these so it was about six months before anyone important got to hear about it.
Unfortunately for us, this will come too late as we are now going on some BA Carmen system which is more limiting than cap 371. Still, may the trend continue for the benefit of the downtrodden everywhere.
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Very funny, Scotty. Now beam up my clothes!