Jumbos

Yes. Standard fit is seats for 3 flightcrew + 2 jumpseats on the left hand side behind the skipper.

How many jumpseats do the 3-crew 747-s have?

I take it you mean in the flight deck ? Not sure about the others but i know the 200’s have a total of five up there.

Yes that would be correct, I believe last summer saw the introduction of the 300’s ?

Sure thing mate Ex- Corsair aircraft

James

How many jumpseats do the 3-crew 747-s have?

Actually no. A cruise pilot is a pilot who is only qualified to fly the cruise part of the flight (as used to be used by Virgin, currently used by Cathay, etc). I sometimes operate as a relief pilot but I am not a cruise pilot as I am qualified to occupy the right seat at all times and act as commander when the Captain is on rest (APIC – acting pilot in command).

I know the name is pretty irrelevant but isn’t that called cruise pilots Ian? where a pilot would relieve an acting crew member for the cruise only? I know Cathay use them alot

That would be a relief crew member rather than a supernumary. A supernumary (by the names very definition) is not a required member of crew whereas a relief pilot would be required to allow the operating flightdeck crew members the chance to rest in order to extend their flight duty period.

To give you an idea of how it works…
The third crew member would get into one of the seats around top of climb or shortly after. The operating crew member can go off to either an assigned passenger seat or preferably a crew rest bunk for a period of time. After that time he returns to the flightdeck and resumes his seat. The relief pilot then swaps with the other pilot while he takes his rest. The length of time that they can extend their 2 pilot permitted duty by is half the time they have been resting for if they have been in a bunk or a third of their rest time if they have been in a seat. For example, if the relief guy is operational for, say, 6 hours then each pilot gets 3 hours kip. If they have been in the bunk then the duty time can be extended by 1.5 hours or if only seats were available then the extension would be 1 hour. The original 2 pilots will complete the flight using the extension to their flight duty time.
Now if there were 2 relief pilots (ie a 4 pilot flight) then both operating pilots would be able to go on rest together so they would get the entire 6 hour period in the bunk so therefore they can have an extension of 3 hours (2 hours for a seat).
The difference between resting in a bunk or in a passenger seat is immense. This is an area where we are very lucky as we have bunks in every company aircraft whereas BA mostly have seats only for crew rest on their 777 fleet although I gather they plan to rectify this with future orders.

Steve why do they do that ? Also i wouldnt have thought that they had a enough supernumerarys to do that on every crossing ?

Probably because it can take up to sixteen and a half hours and it’s a night crossing!!

Steve why do they do that ? Also i wouldnt have thought that they had a enough supernumerarys to do that on every crossing ?

I flew San Francisco-Sydney on United and we were up the best part of 16 hours, but I don’t know if we had 3 or 4 pilots to be honest.

I know that Qantas carry a supernumerary on the Sydney – Lax crossing

wysiwyg,

I have always been told any flight over 8 hours requires a third flight crew member. I know when I flew on the B767 to the US and Caribbean a few years back we always carried atleast three flight crew.

Let me try and explain it another way…
It is possible that this may be the rule under one of the regulators who have filed an exemption from ICAO (perhaps the FAA in this case) but it is not the norm as you can see from the example I posted about my Miami flight. Have you considered that there are many occasions where 3 pilots are sitting up front when only 2 are required (eg. line training, checking, positioning crew, supernumaries, ops inspectors, etc, etc)

The reason I posted a response to your statement was that if it is indeed a rule somewhere it is not a rule that widebodies are operated to in the majority of the world.

Ever heard of the phrase “niche aircraft” ? 😉

Yes.

HON 1R – The 8 hours thing on the B744 may be some obscure FAA ruling however it isn’t the case under JAA rules. Our B744’s do sectors to Florida and all over the Carribean with 2 pilots and flight times over 8 hours. In fact 3 weeks ago I did a Miami as a 2 pilot crew with a flight time of 9.30 outbound and 8.05 inbound.

wysiwyg,

I have always been told any flight over 8 hours requires a third flight crew member. I know when I flew on the B767 to the US and Caribbean a few years back we always carried atleast three flight crew.

Might well be your favourite, but it wasn’t that popular with the airlines.

Flex

Ever heard of the phrase “niche aircraft” ? 😉

I flew San Francisco-Sydney on United and we were up the best part of 16 hours, but I don’t know if we had 3 or 4 pilots to be honest.

That one would come under FAA regs so I can’t be sure. I have done a sector of that length (HKG-LHR without Chinese overflight clearances so routed northeast via Tokyo and then west across Siberia!!!) and we couldn’t have been legal under the then UK CAA rules without 4 pilots.

How many hours can a 3 pilot crew fly?

Do Airbus 340-500 and Boeing 777-200LR fly with 4 pilots, or are their ranges longer? The Worldliner record flight of 22 h 42 min had 7 pilots, but this was a demonstration… will service flights need 5 or 6 pilots?

Do 747SP or 747-200 or -300 long flights need extra flight engineers as well?

How many hours can a 3 pilot crew fly? – Depends on many things such as the time of day you start, how many sectors you are doing, how many nights you have spent within countries on adjacent time zones from your own, etc, etc. As you can see it’s a how long is a piece of string type question that we consult tables for to deal with all the variables. Even then we can extend the resultant time by varying amounts by different types of inflight rest or doing what we call ‘using discretion’.

Do Airbus 340-500 and Boeing 777-200LR fly with 4 pilots, or are their ranges longer? The Worldliner record flight of 22 h 42 min had 7 pilots, but this was a demonstration… will service flights need 5 or 6 pilots? – The flight you mention was not operated under Public Transport rules so was not subject to the same Flight Time Limitations scheme. Similarly a few years ago 2 friends of mine put some A330 spares in a 757 and operated on their own without a break from Manchester to Solo City in Indonesia in 3 sectors. That would never be permitted if it wasn’t in effect just a private flight. A330’s, A340’s, B777’s and B744’s can be operated by 2, 3 or 4 pilots depending on how long you need the aircraft to stay in the air for, however there is no Flight Time Limitations benefit under JAA rules for having more than 4. If you had more than 4 pilots then the extra guys/gals would have to sit in the cabin for take off and landing as only the A380 has 5 seats in the flightdeck (out of the current modern long haul aircraft).

Do 747SP or 747-200 or -300 long flights need extra flight engineers as well? – When I used to be cabin crew we used to do extended FTL operations on the 747-200 from Heathrow to Tokyo. In order to achieve this we carried 1 Captain, 2 FO’s and 2 Flight Engineers.

HON 1R – The 8 hours thing on the B744 may be some obscure FAA ruling however it isn’t the case under JAA rules. Our B744’s do sectors to Florida and all over the Carribean with 2 pilots and flight times over 8 hours. In fact 3 weeks ago I did a Miami as a 2 pilot crew with a flight time of 9.30 outbound and 8.05 inbound.

I flew San Francisco-Sydney on United and we were up the best part of 16 hours, but I don’t know if we had 3 or 4 pilots to be honest.

How many hours can a 3 pilot crew fly?

Do Airbus 340-500 and Boeing 777-200LR fly with 4 pilots, or are their ranges longer? The Worldliner record flight of 22 h 42 min had 7 pilots, but this was a demonstration… will service flights need 5 or 6 pilots?

Do 747SP or 747-200 or -300 long flights need extra flight engineers as well?

As stated, The B747-100,-200,-300 and SP require(d) a flight engineer. The B747-400 only requires two flight crew, although any flight which is longer than 8 hours (no matter what the a/c size) requires a third flight crew member.

Jester and David have got the right end of the stick. Over 80% of the flights I do have 3 or even 4 pilots on the flightdeck. Although the aircraft is flown by 2 pilots we cannot complete the flight durations we do within flight time regulations unless we use extra pilots to extend our available working time. Ultra long haul takes a lot of pilots.