Soddim, you wrote
I doubt if anyone has planned that crews should work these hours.
That is the point you are missing. Current regulations allow crews to extend their duty as long as necessary for lifesaving purposes, using discretion. However, it is not permitted to roster discretion: what the government is attempting is to PLAN extended duties weeks in advance, at the stage where it would be easy enough to add crew members. My company, for example, has enough crews that it could allocate extra pilots to these flights easily- sure, standby cover back in the UK would be reduced, but I often spend weeks on standby without a call. The MoD is penny-pinching; it is unwilling to pay the small cost of a larger crew.
brit bus driver: unless you are seriously suggesting that longer duty hours do not affect safety, your point is irrelevant- military aviation can, and sometimes has to, accept lower levels of safety.
Blacksheep, sabre rattling from faraway Borneo? Easy to talk about conscription when you've ensured you're safely out of the way... as for your serious point, if you're suggesting that the RAF can't cope, conscription would be unnecessary, a significant proportion of airline pilots would volunteer as Hostilities Only aircrew. As Douglas Reeman said, Regulars are the people who look after the armed forces in peacetime!
