FTL?

[Studsgaard]

Let’s assume a ‘friend of a friend...’ is scheduled to fly a charter from Rome to NY departing at 20:00LT. The operation wants the crew to position to Rome from Nice early the same morning for them to rest 11 hrs. in Rome.
How can this be legal?
Yes, the crew has proper accommodation and facilities to rest. But not all people might be able to go back to sleep at 10 in the morning just because they were up at 5.
In this case I am sure the crew ends up a lot more tired during the night flight than if they positioned they day before.

[Max Torque]

That is how the cookie crumbles. It's legal, so short of filing a fatigue report, off you go.

Given a schedule like that, I would very actively maximise my rest - go to bed early the night before positioning to Rome - or straight to bed if on min rest from the preceding duty.

I would then get 2-3 hours sleep in Rome, or just snooze and relax in my room. No gym, no walk and definitely no sightseeing or shopping.

The 4-5 hours from check in Rome to coast out would be liveable at that time of day; crew then swap having naps/monitored rest through the NAT/HLA. Feet dry in North America the crew chat about who is feeling the sharpest and whoever feels sharpest is then PF. Or the most experienced pilot becomes PIC/PNF after a briefing that stresses primacy of flight management versus aircraft control. Sort of a monitored approach from 45000 ft, but without the handover at the end. Or some other strategy the crew feels comfortable with. A gallon of espresso perhaps....

It's not optimal, but part of being professional and getting the big bucks is focusing on and dealing with the limitations of the job and the regs, developing fatigue management strategies and exercising risk and error management. That might include not doing the sidestep at KTEB in the dark for example.

At the end of the day, your mate is flying charter under FTL's -lucky him. For those of us who choose to work private ops, fatigue is an area to be addressed just like weather. In other words seek to minimise the impact and have alternative strategies, including saying no - not easy, but easier with age, experience and money in the bank.

Just an opinion. There really is no definitive answer.

[galaxy flyer]

To the OP, why would you do that? You’re already paying for the hotel in Rome, just position the day before. It’s pennies compared to the cost of the operation. I guarantee the operation I ran would have done just that. Yes, we had times where we had to, but not where there was an option.

GF

[Max Torque]

Good point GF.

[Miles Magister]

Whilst GF has made a good point and is the way that I would probably plan the task we can not really make sensible suggestions here as we do not know what the underlying aircraft availability is. Maybe the company are trying to squeeze a little bit more utilisation from the aircraft.
If this is the case it is an unfortunate side effect of trying to balance the books.

MM

[galaxy flyer]

MM,

Which is the case I addressed, sometimes aircraft availablity or maintenance schedule makes the situation what it is.

GF

[Studsgaard]

Thanks for your 5 cents guys.

[CaptainProp]

”How can this be legal?”

Because the FTLs were, in my opinion, not made for on demand charters, with changes occuring on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis. They were made for flights and schedules that are planned weeks in advance, with minimal changes as the schedule roles on.

The issue with positioning the day before, from a sales dept point of view, is that its better to leave the aircraft where it is to see if you can pick up another charter which will pay for the positioning flight, in this case to Rome. As someone already mentioned, its all about optimising aircraft utilisation.

Not sure what “type” of operation we are talking about here, but if its only about the hotel costs when talking about a €200-250K charter, then I would just make a call to the relevant departments in our company and inform them that we have decided to position the day before in order to get proper rest before the flight. I always work with the charter department, and I see it as my job to deliver on their sales, but there are times where I will dictate how that needs to happen in order to protect myself and the crew. I think thats only fair and more often than not we will agree on a solution without any big discussions.

CP

Edit: In this case I would also argue that parking is way cheaper in Rome than in Nice and use this to my advantage when “selling” my plan to the company.