I spent several years flying both front line and back up and thinking about it brings back a myriad of stories as well as happy memories.
The planning goes back to the 60s.
https://www.flightglobal.com/FlightP...20-%200642.PDF
I flew once with Eastern...no doubt a 727.
It was a time when SR were very short of crews and I dead headed from Boston to New York.
Whilst we were flying 600+hours a year we were only getting 6 or 7 days off a month and there were guys who hadn't any leave in 18 months - the DH flight was to try and get more crew efficiency.
The flight deck had booked seats whose ticket price was around double the shuttle cost and we boarded early.
Towards the end of the scrum a scene unfolded more akin to "Ga-Ga Land" or a movie from that part of the country.
A young woman around thirty suddenly shrieked "You can't talk to me like that this is AMERICA" and threw her arms up in the air in a Titanicesque pose, reached up to extract her carry on from the hat rack and stormed off the aircraft.
No one batted an eyelid and the Flight Eng, skipper and I just exchanged glances.
If it happened in the UK today she would have been arrested and had her orifices searched; we would have been deplaned and placed in a sterile area whilst the sniffer dogs romped up and down the aircraft.
The Swiss had a jaundiced, arrogant view of the US of A - land of opportunity but lacking any efficiency and I witnessed a "put down" of our Swiss station engineer in Chicago in front of dispatch when the skipper, who was a colonel or something in the Militia, turn to the flight eng and stated in very broad bunstli dialect "what can you expect from a developing land" - some might consider the Swiss as astute.
Someone in BEA management was very clever as they put together a team of young dispatchers to run the show. Not unlike the traders from East London and Essex who make a fortune on the stock exchanges.
The team were very enthusiastic and able which was reflected in the crews who operated the fights.
One has to understand the demographics and remember that in the 50s and 60s the manufacturing base, as well as the social structure, in Scotland and the North had been destroyed which led to a lot of commuters which was our core business. One had to then factor in rugby, cricket, horse racing, bank and school holidays to the back up requirements.
Whilst they got it right most of the time they actually flew an empty aircraft to Glasgow, then on to Edinburgh and finally back to London.
It was intelligent gambling.
Flight deck did a block of 4 day, eight hour standby - it was often incredibly boring as there is only so much Bridge that you can play (especially with a dummy hand) and only one Telegraph crossword. But sometimes you worked your arse off and your duty times had to be doctored to stay legal.
The guys and girls on the ground were a great team and both sides would bend over backwards to help each other - so if the Mrs wanted you home one evening they would do their best to arrange it and similarly we would do our best to help them with a problem.
One of the dispatchers was learning to fly and almost certainly got his hands on a Trident 1 - met him at a fellow Trident pilots funeral last year - he eventually made senior captain in BA.
To be continued..