In these days of financial restraint and many fewer flying hours to maintain currency (competency is a different matter), the crime of an empty console must be avoided. In the days of "hard crews", then there were many occasions when a console was not used in order to give an operator a break (often one in 3 in the team on the Sentry that I used to run).
Having been out of circulation for a couple of years, I hope that extra crew members are carried on ME aircraft, and console time is not wasted. While hard crews is a good thing, maximum time on console must be a priority and perhaps soft crews is the current way ahead?
Last edited by Wensleydale; 9th Jun 2012 at 08:10.
Reason: typo