Capt Homesick - if I have missed the point then the following quote from the Times article is obviously in error " BALPA is advising its members to refuse to undertake such flights".
Maybe there should be a plan to complete this task of unknown magnitude by chartering a huge number of aircraft and crews in order to make sure that none of the crews have to work the sort of hours the RAF AT crews expect to work as a matter of course in a national emergency. However, should there still not be enough for the task and some of BALPAs members be asked to work longer than their normal maximum hours, the union makes it perfectly clear what their response should be.
This is not acceptable and I would not expect many BALPA members to follow this advice if the chips were down.
The point is that it is not possible to be sure that the provisions made are sufficient and additional flexibility might be required. Longer permitted crew duty hours facilitate this if necessary. I doubt if anybody has planned that crews should work these hours.