After my last post, I spoke to a friend who is a captain at Air Canada. He said, after a tail strike like that the crew would definitely be grounded pending an investigation, at least at AC. He said he couldn’t imagine they would be allowed to fly the return trip tonight as rostered. He did say that some European carriers sometimes do a two night layover in North America. if that’s the case, then tonight’s flight crew would have been here since Saturday afternoon and all should be fine.

He also said that the tail strike is the talk of the town today at Pearson. With all the close up pics taken by plane spotters when it happened, everyone is scratching their heads about why the elevators were fully actioned. He said there would definitely be an investigation.

So I’m not sure where Air France is going to get the crew to fly 351 tonight (unless flight crews layover for 2 nights). Inbound 356 will provide an aircraft. And I’m sure flight attendants from yesterday‘s flight will be able to return today. But surely Air France doesn’t station a standby crew in Toronto just for its one flight a day?