Hola JD -
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Although your points are basically contrary to the ones I described, we were talking about two different things. You talk augmented crew, obviously generally applicable to shorter range aircraft used on longer routes, I was talking about long range aircraft which are always crewed by 3 pilots, and take part of a well established departure and arrival procedure.
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You see, we went from a fleet of 5 B747-200s (2 pilots + 1 F/E) which are now stored, to only 2 B747-400s, which are
always crewed by 3 pilots of which a captain, a first officer (cruise captain qualified) and a second officer (cruise co-pilot qualified). That crew always works as a unit crew, we never operate the B747-400s with only 2 pilot crewmembers. Same remarks apply to our fleet of 5 A-340s.
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Should we operate say a B737, MD80 or A320 with an augmented crew, a rather unusual situation, the additional pilot would, at worst, offer to do the walkaround and be an extra pair of eyes for departure and arrival...! And for that situation, I entirely agree with your opinion about the "extra body". Leave the guys play with their toy and tell him to sit on his hands...
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Happy contrails