How to read your first roster: FDP, rest, standby codes and what's actually legal
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#1 New crew get a roster and see a wall of codes. The ones that matter:
- FDP (flight duty period): report time to engines off on the last sector. Under EASA the basic max is 13 hours, less at night or with more sectors.
- Rest: 12 hours at home base, 10 away, never less than the previous duty.
- SBY/ASBY/HSBY: standby, airport standby, home standby, airport counts fully as duty.
- DO/OFF: local days off; count them each month.
- Cumulative caps: 60 duty hours in 7 days, 190 in 28, 100 block hours in 28.Check your own roster against these. Rostering software encodes what the airline asked it to, and mistakes happen.
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#2 As a union rep: yes, check it yourself, and query anything illegal in writing with crewing, citing the rule. Keep every roster change notification, disputes are won with records.
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#3 Bookmarked. Two weeks into my first roster and the rest-between-duties calculation door-to-door was the eye-opener.