CONF iture,
South Africa to Tripoli qualifies for the long haul category, don't you think ?
There is more than a Flightglobal article, there is a all thread Pilot handling skills under threat, says Airbus with some very interesting stuff to read, maybe you would like to participate.
The JNB-TIP sector for Afriqiyah is blocked at 8:50, which would fit most definitions of Long Haul (usually above 8 or 10 hrs), but that sector isn't typical of the company's route structure. Much of the flying is from TIP to European destinations where the block times are in the range of 3-5 hours. To know for sure you'd have to analyze Afriqiyah's flight program for the A330, but my guess is that their A330 pilots probably see, on average, more sectors than the pilot group Airbus was expressing concern about. The specific concern there is pilots who's average block time and working agreements result in a very low number of monthly sectors, say 8-10 or fewer, with only half of those being handling sectors.
Re, that thread, definitely interesting stuff, but your comment was specifically about what Airbus had stated, and hence my reply relates to that.
Cheers,
ELAC