AirBrake
No ops or crewing department should 'rely' on crews going into discretion and they most certainly do not at easyJet. The schedule is not constructed with discretion as part of the program and there is buffer provided to protect against this.
There is a very clear understanding that it is ONLY the Commader who has the discretion to extend an FDP. If a rostered duty exceeds the FDP then Ops/Crewing have a problem to solve if the Commander is not able to exercise discretion. Contrary, to what I have read here, easyJet's the use of discretion, in terms of minutes per month versus duties flown is in fact very low.
In September as an example, easyJet flew 8142 sectors and we had a total of 24.9hrs of discretion on 48 occasions = average 0.5 per extended FDP. Or, of 2700 crew duties, a Commander exercised discretion on 48 occasions or 1.77% of duties resulted in discretion.
Hardly, excessive use of discretion considering the scale of the operation