Originally Posted by
San Gottardo
I think the OP means something else. One crew flies CDG-LAX-NCE; upon arriving in NCE it jumps on a scheduled AF flight back to Paris (or to wherever they live). A second crew takes a scheduled flight from Paris to NCE and then operates NCE-LAX-CDG. Like that they do not change their working hours (except the little add-on NCE-Paris), respect rest times, and do not take up any space on the long haul flight. The only thing that changes is that either the start or end point of their rotation in France changes, NCE instead of CDG. That bit is covered by dead-heading between Nice and Paris.
That’s what LX does with its crews: one operates ZRH-JFK-GVA, and deadheads back to Zurich. A second crew deadheads from Zurich to Geneva and operates GVA-JFK-ZRH. Even the plane rotates that way, ie always goes back to ZRH/never two GVA flights on two subsequent days.
Maybe ITA does something like that with FCO/MXP, where JFK is the only long haul destination from MXP. Their planes sometimes do several MXP flights before going back to Rome, but their crews maybe do the W pattern.
Your reference to LX is quite interesting.
You mean that the A333 that lands in GVA from JFK, then continues (empty) to ZRH?
As I was writing I checked FR24 and I think that I misunderstood you. You mean something else. For example on 1 sep, LX23 JFK-GVA (HB-JHF) departing JFK at 725pm landed GVA at 915am. That same plane operated LX22 GVA-JFK on 2 Sep, deparing GVA at 11:50am. Hence the same plane does ZRH-JFK-GVA-JFK-ZRH. Only the crew deadheads both ways.
NCE-LAX is a longer flight than GVA-JFK (and so is CDG-NCE compared to ZRH-GVA). I wonder if AF unions would find it acceptable that a crew deadheads from CDG to NCE and then takes over the NCE-LAX flight. WIth a sufficient risk premium built in case of delays on the CDG-NCE.