Yes, they would be operational pilots, but not flying very much. Often just once a month to keep their 'recency' valid. Being management pilots, they also tend to do one very unfortunate thing! When Royal Flights or ultra VIP flights come up- they nobble them for themselves. Thus you actually have the unfortunate occurence of maybe the fleet's most inexperienced pilot flying HM rather than a far better pilot for her who flies that route every month and flies every few days. They are NOT the people with longest service/experience, in fact sometimes they can be very junior. It is not unknown for some of them to be 'refugees' from regular line seniority work systems. Working in the offices is not that attractive an option when you have a nice shiny 747 to play with. Their job is usually administrative- promulgating Fleet News/Notices/admin/working out crew numbers. Ops and Crewing do all the day to day operational stuff.
In immediate control of all flights is the Ops department who work out crew duty hours, weather disruptions etc and communicate to the crew involved. The Duty Captains always leave regular ops and disruptions to them. For example- where's best to divert to, trip disruptions, advice on tech problems (with Engineering dept). The crew's job is to deliver the aeroplane where required safely and legally at minimal cost. So you do have a significant back up in the air and can communicateby HF radio or satellite phone (if you have one) or ACARs. However we like to keep such communication to a minimum and be left to do the job.
Last edited by Rainboe; 16th Sep 2008 at 09:03.