Originally Posted by
emma dog
This doesn’t make sense. If the crew was timed out, who flew the plane? The cost to fly a 359 empty is over $10k/hr flight time, or roughly $90k to fly lhr-DTW. There’s almost no circumstance where flying an empty plane for 9 hours is better than waiting a couple of hours for a pilot to have 12 hours rest.
If DTW has a A359 flight the next day they may need to get that plane at LHR to DTW because they do not have any other A359, and sometimes there is a crew of pilots that are not timed out, whereas the flight attendants may not have a full crew to fly with passengers. We do not know the circumstances, so the plane may have been needed in DTW and A359's are not sitting around, so its more economical to get an a/c back to fly a full plane the next day anthen return. I have seen this done a lot. canceling tomorrows DTW/LHR flight could be a lot more expensive than getting thismA359 at LHR back to DTW and ready to go for the next outbound to LHR.
RC