We've done 3 crew -400 to Europe as has been mentioned before here. I did a FRA and when we got to the hotel the Captain went into the coffee shop to see a colleague. When he came back to the lobby he reported, "He said he thought I had been shot down." I felt similarly, but must have lost my silk somewhere.
Of course we can do it. But it will again erode the safety margins that were built into the FTLs in the past. Just this one change will not cause an accident, but these continual safety erosions add up, to the incidents, and then the accident.
Thankfully the DFO that said that Cathay can tolerate a hull loss is not longer with us.
When Mr Patrick Tsai, an exceedingly well respected businessman in Hong Kong, was a director of CX and as the only Chinese executive director at that time our compradore to Beijing, he was also the mentor of Rod Eddington. He advised Rod, "Do not reach for the poison dollar."
You can understand that the present management is continually reaching for that last 5%, that last squeeze of the system to get the maximum dollar out of it. Such management will always end in tears, usually not for the managers, but for the constituents for which their company provided jobs, service and trust.