Originally Posted by
fly2nrt
Much better Westbound than the Eastbound red-eye.
Eastbound is always a redeye*
* - with a few exceptions from the east coast which have mostly gone away.
Originally Posted by
MSPeconomist
LIS-SFO and vv would surely require more than one set of pilots, although they might staff it with an extra pilot or two rather than a full duplicate cockpit crew.
It's interesting that staffing costs seem to drive the schedule rather than equipment utilization, although if TAP has excess aircraft sitting around collecting airport parking fees due to COVID-19, they should try to minimize the costs they can control given that they have decided to operate the route.
Most airlines usually do this (and similar) flights with 3 pilots. Given that they have an excess of pilots that need hours to stay current and underutilized equipment, as well as low loads in J, it's probably not a bad move to do this flight with 2 crews, and time it so that you can meet both the 6AM bank of onward connections ex-SFO and the 9AM bank of onward connections ex-LIS.
Also - I would not read too much into the schedule in late October. It's too early to see if/how those flights will be operating.
P.S. You've got your "usual" 1400€ RT in J from DUB in Oct/Nov.