QF Repatriation Flights Crew Duty Time
 

Listening to the radio a little while back I heared an interview with Alan Joyce about the repatriation flights. He said the aircraft had the crew remain on board. Now I;m gathering there must have been 2 complete crews? He said something along the lines of a tour od duty of 40 hrs

How did they keep the return crew fresh and alert for the whole trip back. Starting a 16 hr flight right after being on the aircraft for 16 hrs sounds quite daunting.

Qudos to the crews involved. First thing I thought of was the double sunrise club.

Must have been interesting getting a dispensation from CASA....."you wanna do what..................................".

Based on information derived from flight radar 24, it would appear that most of the long haul flights are having the minimum rest periods during the offshore layovers.

It would also be responsible to assume that Qantas are operating under a FRMS - 48.1 appendix 7 opposed to any other appendix.

Many of the world’s airlines are currently doing double crewed “returns”, with the crew spending the entire 30 hrs+ in the airplane. It’s been going on for quite some time now…

Most crews are lucky and get a 14 day quarantine afterwards to consider their flight and duty time sins… 🤣

Tough times out there in the real world at the moment for a lot of people

Haven't freight drivers been always doing it this way?

I don’t think any duty times would be as long as 40 hours. The flights where the crew turnaround immediately were Darwin to India and soon Darwin to Shanghai. So sub-10 hour flight times each way.
The US and Europe flights are still staying in port I believe.

Some repatriation flights last year were run with the Business Class cabin sealed off from the rest of the aircraft and a complete double crew carried.
On the way out, the return crew occupied / relaxed in / slept in the lie-flat business seats while the outward crew worked as usual, on the way back, vice versa.

Now we know more about aerosol transmission and how transmissible Dela is, I'm not so sure if that would be allowed.
I'd guess that at the least the Business cabin would need to be further subdivided to keep the two sets of cabin crew isolated from each other

If masks are worn to cover the nose and mouth, the risk of transmission from a positive CoVID case to a negative person is greatly diminished.

United and American airlines in the USA collected a lot of data on this. Once masks were mandatory, the transmission of CoVID onboard commercial flights reduced to almost zero.

Going to a birthday party or bbq where people were not wearing masks was much riskier than flying in regards to catching CoVID 19.

From an ex QF mate who’s daughter is cabin crew.
DRW-DEL-DRW is turnaround now where a few months back they over nighted in hotel. Came back into DRW recently from DEL and they take pax off 30 at a time for processing. Arrived in DRW at 09:45 and arrived at Howard Springs at 15:30.

Next flight was DRW-FRA-DRW after 8 days in Howard Springs, stayed in hotel at FRA airport.

They use J class seats, not double crew for cabin, no idea about tech crew but you’d assume it’s the single crew.

Mate was saying that cabin crew all enjoying Howard Springs, a great winter.