Originally Posted by
JustSomeGuy1978
900 flights over 17 years works out to just over 52 flights a year, or one a week. I'm no aviation expert, and though that may seem low I remind myself of the following. 1) Typical flight crew schedule for international flights are normally departure flight, overnight at destination, return flight, overnight at home for rest day, repeat. Plus the occasional 'weekend' off every couple three turns for sanity. 2) add vacation time for someone with high seniority, after 20+ years I would expect at least 6 week of vacation time per year. 3) does this number account for every flight worked or only those where he fraudulently acted as the captain. Does this number account for times where he acted as the co pilot?
Based on this I would not be shocked if a senior pilot physically acts as the captain on a flight as few as a handful of times a month.
900 trips (not sure if they mean legs or trips when they mention flights) is 52 trips a year. If the pilot flew long haul in a wide body, an average leg could be 8 hours or 16 hours per trip. Multiply that by 52 and you get to 832 hours per year. The range of hours flow per year by AC wide body pilots is 750 to 900 hours per year. The TC mandated maximum is 1,000 hours per year.
The numbers seem to make rough sense.