Plodding Along :
take the 18 hour rule for example,crew will more often than not take the full 18 hours rest, not because they need 18 hours sleep but because they believe "use it or lose it".
Is that the 18 hour rule that says the company should plan 18 hours between duty at Chicago and Denver, but if off schedule the cc will reduce to the usual minimum of 12 hours?
Or is the 18 hour rule that says the company should plan a minimum of 18 hours off if there is no local night, because a day rest is more draining than a night rest, but can be reduced to 14 hours?
I don't know another 18 hour rule...but maybe you are more familiar with my working agreements that I am.
Don't all employees have working agreements? Don't all working agreements place limits on the way the company operates? In that sense, everybody has restrictive practices.
I've flown for BA for many years and I have never had to divert or night stop in a disruption because of cc hours...the pilots are always forced to stop working before us because the scheme limits are an hour less for them. There isn't an option...the law won't allow the flight to continue.
I also don't know the story of the Denver flight diverting. Isn't that one of the trips where the pilots have to carry a heavy pilot in order to allow them to take rest? Is that why the pilots could have legally continued beyond the cc limits?
I thought that the pilots also had industrial agreements (aka restrictive practices) with BA? Don't you expect and indeed insist that BA plan the operation around those? This does not strike me as a shocking reluctance to allow BA to be profitable...nor does it suggest to me that BALPA are running ops. Yet some of the posts on here sound quite frantic at the idea that cc and BASSA have the same basic expectation.
By the way, Slickster, Bealine is one of our ground staff and has an enviable reputation for exceptional customer service and great team work...I'm not sure that his refusal to try to blame all the problems on his colleagues in other departments is any reason to pity him. Like he said, we can easily turn this thread into a very long list of examples of apparently bloody-minded behaviour. We all know they have happened on both sides of the cockpit door.
Finally, (yes, I agree, far too long-winded!) Why is there this repeated assertion that cc still work to 1970's style agreements and that we have avoided any changes? Do these posters actually know anything about BA cc? Is it purely the fact that we are a unionised workforce, and some people have a visceral reaction against the idea of unions, that perpetuates this myth?