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Originally Posted by Camper01
2. If the crew was so close to timing out (within 1 hour) why were we even allowed to board the plane? It was almost a 3 hour flight, even if we took off right away the crew would have timed out an hour after take off.
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Let me try to explain this with a little more detail so hopefully it will make sense. I got all the info I'm about to post
here.
The pilots of a "two-pilot" airplane have a maximum of 10 duty hours in a calendar day (0000 hours to 2359 hours.) Duty period means the period of elapsed time between reporting for an assignment involving flight time and release from that assignment. All time between these two points is part of the duty period, even if flight time is interrupted by nonflight-related duties. They are allowed to extend that 10 hours to a total of 12 if it will not violate any of these other limitations: 500 hours per calendar quarter, 800 hours in two consecutive quarters, 1,400 hours in a calendar year, or 8 hours of flight deck time in a 24 hour period (actual time sitting in the cockpit with engines running). Now, with all that being said, the case is usually that the pilots know they are going to be cutting it close in situations like this, and often, because of the weather, cannot accurately predict what time they will be taking off. The reason they put you on the airplane, and went out and sat on the taxi-way knowing they might not make it, is because they were probably hoping for an opening in the weather to allow them to take off in enough time to get to the destination before becoming "illegal." Unfortuneately, they ran out of time and did not have a replacement crew so your flight was cancelled. The limitations on "three-pilot" airplanes are the same in principle, just with different numbers of hours as the maximums. Flight attendants are also regulated using the same basic principle, with yet again different hour requirements. As you can imagine after reading this, it is definitely not easy to keep track of on a bad weather day when things go bad. I hope that clarifies the hours situation a little bit. Sorry again you didn't make your conference, hopefully it won't deter you from flying again.