Crew changes, huh???
 

You know how you push back from the gates 3 hours late at places like YYZ, which makes you really forward to getting back to HKG as quick as you can, then as you reach the East coast of Asia you get this darn announcement saying that there's gotta be a crew change diversion to somewhere like TPE or Japan. And makes you end up feeling kinda pissed or paranoid that there is yet another delay. Add that up on top of the original delay, oh it's gonna be 6 hours late at least.

Every time this happens I am like, what the heck!? We're almost there, why bother changing the crew? I mean, I'm pretty sure they wanna go home too (most of them, considering the port is HKG, where many CX crew are based), why go to some foreign places instead? Do all crews want unexpected or surprise vacations by diverting somewhere else? They all seem to be very rigit about that 18 hour limit, like their life will be at stake if they stay on duty for longer than that.

Probably because of legal restrictions. If you have already taken off late from your origin destination, then, with the length of flights from a lot of the US destinations, an additional 3 hour delay before departure will take crew, both cabin and flight, close to their legal maximum flying. To then add on the extra 4 (?) hours to HKG would make them illegal to fly.

Crew tend to have no control over things like this, and as much as they probably would very much like to go home, if they become illegal to fly, then it is a done deal, they are not going home and you are having a crew change. It has happened to me several times in Europe, where I have already worked a 13.5 hour day, and end up having to come off a flight, or stay an extra night away from home because to fly the next sector, or operate a my intended flight the next day would not be allowed due to high hours, or not enough legal rest between flights.

OP, are you even serious?

Actually if I am the crew I would prefer to fly on so that i can claim over time and stay one day extra off duty at home rather than divert to TPE or Japan...

But it is not the decision of Captain to take sometimes as it has to be agreed by every crew on board as well as ground management (and sometimes unions eggheads...)

The union heads in Hong Kong are actually working professional representing their peers unlike their US counterparts who are members of the local crime families. Head of FA union is actually a working CX FA

working over the limit would infringe applicable laws. this has other ramifications - it might also invalidate insurance policies (in general and if anything happens during that flight), affect any loans they have with banks (there is always a clause which would make all loans immediately repayable if CX does anything illegal), and may also affect other contracts CX may have.

i don't think the crew like it either - they might have other things planned upon arrival (like getting some decent sleep, or taking care of their kids and being with their family) - but i don't think they have a say on this.

i've had lots of arguments with my medical friends over this - when you have surgeons doing 100+ hours per week (in public hospitals in HK), often working 36 hour shifts with no sleep .... why do pilots and flight attendants have such long breaks between longhaul flights and why is there a strict limit on the number of hours they work? the only thing i can say is that you can always find other doctors to help out (in a hospital setting), whereas there's nobody to call upon when you're up in the air ...

as (frequent) travellers we just have to bear with these things. i sympathize with the OP but we just have to accept that we can't control these things (and neither can the FAs or the captain in most cases - or perhaps he can fly the plane faster?)

hilarious :p

^

In the worst case, if a surgeon made a mistake, one patient died. For flight crew, we are talking about the life of 300+ passengers and crews. The work involved during descend and approach is tremendous. I don't want the pilot of my flight become fatigue after 20+ hours of duty.

A line must be drawn somewhere. If the duty hour can be extended, should it be 1, 2, or 3 hours?

Sometime we just have to live with all these regulations, guidelines, legal requirements, no matter how ridiculous they look.

OP - to be honest, it is nice for them to make the trip almost all the way before changing crews.

If you ask others' experience, in most of the case, the crews were changed way before it took off, which in fact generated more delays.

Not exactly - She is in fact a ISM.

Executive Committee

But for real - airlines operating in Hong Kong in fact took advantage of all employees due to limited protection from Hong Kong Ordinance.

The following is an actual court case from UK that BA was sued and loss both trial and appeal because of HK-based crews were discriminated by age:

British Airways Plc v Mak & Ors [2011] EWCA Civ 184

I think they are already doing this - extending duty hour by a max of 30 mins-1 hr, or they might have an intrinsic buffer..... that they dont plan for using...

Its better than an experience I had with (now defunct) Canadian Airlines when the crew went over their crew hours but we were halfway over the South Pacific on our way to Australia. The crew just all sat down ! No more service they said. ... Oh, but there's a bottle of water in the galley , so just help yourselves. No coffee, tea or juices.

Give me a crew change anytime.

When you consider this type of long flights, you really want the pilots, co-pilots to be tired and sleepy??? Of course they were not flying per-se during the 3 hours delay but they have been up nevertheless since the wee hours to get ready for this flight. Same for the cabin crew. People think it's an easy job, just walk around and serve people but hey, it's a tough job too and after 18 hours, I'd start to get quite easily irritable and pissed...

As a passenger, I would be annoyed by another delay, that's for sure. But i'd rather have a nice crew and fresh pilots. Security, legal, health, unions, regulations... all this has to be respected and I am sure they did not come up with silly rules just to annoy the passengers.

Sometimes, a little patience goes a long way ;) stay zen.

They normally have 3-4 pilots on board for such a flight. If the delay is around 1-2 hours they can certainly deal with the situation perfectly by planning the rest period sensibly.

Plus for a trans pacific flight more than half of the flight is on Auto-pilot...

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 4: Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 5_1_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B206 Safari/7534.48.3)

Each pilot is clocked to do 8 hours only, and even the plane is on auto pilot it doesn't mean the plane does not need 2 pilot to sit there in case if there is anything happening.

For long sector like YYZ that is 15 hour I don't think there's lots of margin for error.

Now are we 'talking' FLight Crew or Cabin Crew??? YYZ-HKG always has two Flight Crews. Same with JFK. I Dont recall LAX, SFO and ORD. As for Cabin Crew, I was can be sure what their legal hours "number" may be.

Here you are..... http://www.cad.gov.hk/english/flightstandards.html

This is purely a legality issue. The Civil Aviation Directory (HKCAD) sets limits as to how many hours a crew member can be on duty. Even if the crew wants to go on (and trust me, sometimes they want to get home as much as the pax), it would mean a huge fine for the airline and possible disciplinary action to the crew member.
As to why they would even leave with the possibility of a divert/crew change is two-fold:
1) It could literally be a question of a few minutes and by flying faster, getting shortcuts, more favorable winds, they might be able to make up the time.
2) The delay to get a replacement crew to the departure airport, if even available, would be much longer than taking off and positioning a replacement crew to TPE etc.

Actually, I read the decision at the above link. (I'm a litigator, including appeals.) This decision doesn't say whether or not BA was found to have discriminated, although I infer that from the fact that BA appealed. This decision results from BA's appeal of jurisdiction, -- whether the trial-level court had jurisdiction under the law to hear the case involving discrimination claims by a group of HK-based cabin crew. BA's position was that not enough of the cabin crew's work was done in the U.K. to give U.K. court jurisdiction to hear the case. From the case summary,And from the court's decision, itself:

For FTers who are not lawyers, jurisdiction is a threshhold issue in litigation. A court (or other tribunal) must have jurisdiction (legal authority) to hear a case. If it does not, the court never gets to the substance of the matter and the cannot render any decision regarding the substance of the matter. Jurisdiction is most often based on geography (a county court usually hears most cases in that county) or subject matter (a family court usually hears family law cases such as divorce, adoption, etc.).

In BA's appeal of the lower court's decision, it claimed that the lower court did not have jurisdiction because the cabin crew did very little (de minimis) of their job in the U.K. This appellate decision does not address the substance of the cabin crew's claims, and only addresses jurisdiction issues. Actually (from my perspective), a pretty interesting decision. Thanks for posting it, I would not have seen it otherwise.

Sorry - wording problem. I was meant jurisdiction at all time. And thanks for the clarification.

I was meant that other airlines' FAs may get protection based on where the company is incorporated. But not in CX's case.

what do you mean??

Because it is a legal and security issue...not something CX imposes but rather HKSAR government.

In the early days of civil aviation, crew works just like any other employees. Sometimes they are asked to do overtime, and sometimes you get over-zealous young men wanting to do overtime to make more money and gain fly hours quicker. In any case, most government left them alone, and then a few accidents happened, and now we have very strict rules on crew hours.

It is really for safety precautions and reasons, and as much as I will probably be also mad if it happened to me, but knowing that I get the safest way to be home or aboard will generally appease my anger.

Trust me, as much time it costs us, it costs CX a bunch of more money to have to supplement crews.