Crew related delays are considered within the airlines control, yes... However crew scheduling can get complex. There are A LOT of factors that go into it. The original post made mention of this being an international trip... That is one BIG factor right there... Depending on the flight time, additional/relief crewmembers may be required... Also it was mentioned that it was a pilot... The airline cannot just throw any pilot on the senority list onto any airplane. They have to be qualified to fly that equipment... In a perfect world there would be one back-up crewmember for every working crewmember. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. Someone also made mention of the day of standby... Airport standby is not very common among the pilot groups. You see it with Flight Attendants, but not so much with pilots.
Again, there are SO MANY factors that could have played into this specific incident it is hard to pin-point exactly the way it should have been. Without a doubt, it SUCKS, but I would say if you got 20k miles out of it, you did pretty well.
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