Time Time Time
The issues of traveling into a trip, for our friends across the pond, is due to the less than permanent nature of bases for crew. Relocation is almost never compensated for by your employer. If it is done, it is nowhere near enough to cover actual costs. The regionals will open or close a base just on the whiff of a contract. Using Colgan Air, feeder for US Airways, United and Continental, as an example. The list that follows is example of their numerous pilot bases:
Aircraft Type: S340B:
ALB
ABE
BGM
BHB
BUF
CRW
CHO
IAD
IAH
ITH
LGA
PQI
MHT
TYR
SCE
SYR
Aircraft type: Q400:
EWR
ALB
ORF
This carrier has listed a total of 50 aircraft! The mainline carriers, over the years, have had bases open and close, as well.
There is a dirty little secret about our supplemental carriers. For international operations, there is no duty limitation, per day! The only restriction is for one 24 continuous period free of duty in the past 7 days! Think about how long a heavy freighter crew has been up with one or two stops for freight and fuel and have a total block time of 11:30 for the day. It can be well over the teens and into the twenties. For domestic operations, you are required to have 8 hours off of duty in 24, but there is no requirement that they have to be consecutive. Travel time to the hotel is not duty time and thus, may get taken out of the eight. Legal is not necessarily safe!
As far as the the captain in Buffalo, he may have been a great guy, but with 4-5 busts in his history, someone should have counseled him to do something else. If he had pulled back to fight the stick pusher, he missed the relationship of swapping altitude for airspeed. That is PPL material and should be instinct for any pilot.
The hens have come home to roost, since the deregulation of the US aviation industry many years ago. Scope clauses have become a joke and the mainline carrier management has outsourced safety to the lowest bidder. They in turn, hire the cheapest labor they can get.
Plumber out!