Originally Posted by
bmwe92fan
Heading to London today and as we all know 1 of the 46 seats is always reserved for a spare pilot / rest / other reason due to regulations.
My question is simple - how often is the spare pilot called upon to enter duty? Is the requirement too restrictive - or not restrictive enough?
For everyone else this isn’t a judgment or anything - just genuinely curious…
I believe the answer is always, as they rotate through. It's not a "just-in-case pilot" seat, it's to make sure that none of the pilots working the flight has to be "on" for the entire duration (and potentially fatigued / lose attention).
I'm not certain what the cutoff for needing the rest seat, but from what I've noticed it's about 7 hours flying time. Note that 7 hours flying time is a fair bit more in working time, with preflight checks and taxi.