It seems we have resumed that old habit of shooting ourselves in the foot again. The pilot reps on the joint CAD AFTL committee have "agreed in principle to extending the 3 man AFTL to 14 hours". They are now just arguing the conditions that it can be used under. I thought the pilot reps were there so that the pilot body could be consulted??? Funny, I don't remember being consulted.
This is not an industrial matter in my opinion, it is flight safety issue. No amount of money is going to make this acceptable or safe. The three man flights such as to Australia and NZ are already the most tiring flights we do. Now they want us to tack a few more hours on and cross a bunch of time zones as well. Imagine the fourth sector on a "W" to Europe with a three man crew. It's no wonder they slipped the controlled rest paragraph into vol 2/2. This must be the exceptional circumstances they refer to except it will not be the exception but the norm to have someone sleeping in the seat.
This is just the CX management solution for screwing up the manning so badly. Can't they see that this will only make more people leave.
What can we do?
(1) email or telephone the AOA and say no way.
(2) Push the AOA to mount a legal challenge against the CAD over any changes and force them to justify any changes in court.
(3) If all else fails go public and through the media bring pressure on the CAD. BA and QF do 4 crew to Europe, why are we any less tired? From what I hear, the operators who do three crew have much longer slips in between but in my opinion, that is still not good enough.
NO NO NO