How can there be any "issues" with crews taking breaks?
The issues might be somewhere else. No problem with breaks, it only depends WHERE the crew can rest and HOW.
First, if you need to rest right after beginning duty, you'r rather sit, eat, read or watch a movie to relax, because you can't sleep just having barely gotten up. Some airlines just provide a sleeping tube, that's it! You can't eat or sit up for hours!! Rest is reduced to torture and basically not giving what was intended, you'll get red-eyed pilots. Safety compromised.
Second, if the crew rest facility is way back in the aircraft (especially if it is a mobile one), then access confines you to travel through the whole cabin, during service, or worse, during a uncontrolled flight phase and panicking passengers. Why would this be an issue? Simply because in a 3 man cockpit, the captain will also rest, typically in the middle of the flight (!) and would want a rapid access to his seat in case of trouble. Furthermore it has been proven over and over again, that in trouble all hands on deck helped save the flight. 3 men are better than 2 with increased and emergency workload. Placing crew rest away from the cockpit might save money, but you compromise safety again. This is not only a Airbus issue, mind you.
Two questions arise here:
- When was the skipper resting? Was he in the cockpit?
- Where was the crew rest bunker placed? Could the 3rd pilot access the cockpit in due time to help?