Cessnapete,
Agreed. My experience is that the pilots have always done that. I have never been delayed or disrupted without all the crew pushing to the legal maximum hours.
The only times I feel that acts of goodwill are unlikely are during disputes, such as when BALPA were trying to win the right for the new pilots for Open Skies to be included on the bidline, or now for the cc.
The agreement for 2 local nights (not 3) rest on an ultra long range is unlikely to be something cc will happily surrender when it is so central to the the current dispute.
Personnaly, I am not certain it is a rational response...but it is very understandable I think. The company want is to agree to work without a 2nd night on long range, so surrendering it (even on a disruption) at the moment is not going to be viewed as a good idea.
I'm sure we all know that these problems come down to the very basic lack of trust between employer and employee in BA. The complaint that some cc are excessively trusting of their union is also (IMO) based on the fact that our relationship with our managers is so poor.
All I was pointing out was that our working agreements are not so restrictive as many are suggesting and that portraying us all as uneccessarlily and irrationally militant is innaccurate.