Does the captain fly the first leg?

It's completely random..."who wants to fly, you wanna fly?" "I don't care, do you care?" Every CA is different, but most don't care it seems. If I'm flying with the same CA the entire trip, more often than not, we seem to swap at the out stations, just to change it up. If the sequence includes a special qual. airport, I've seen most captains try to go every other leg so that the special qual airports fall on them.

Preflights are almost always belong to me, barring a scheduling issue, or delayed dh causing me to run late or something like that. FMS is whoever gets to it first.
 
Usually I get the second legs back to base. Some will give me the first leg. Let me tell you, a loaded CASA flies so much easier than en empty one.
 
There was a captain at my previous regional who would check the weather on every leg, and if the weather was less than 5 sm or crosswinds above 5 knots he would take the leg. Absolutely hated flying with him. @Seggy should know who I'm talking about. Now he's at a major so I guess I'm the fool.
 
nc1982 said:
There was a captain at my previous regional who would check the weather on every leg, and if the weather was less than 5 sm or crosswinds above 5 knots he would take the leg. Absolutely hated flying with him. @Seggy should know who I'm talking about. Now he's at a major so I guess I'm the fool.
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Probably just best to let those type of guys fly the entire trip. Either way I get paid, so whatever. Although it would be nice to know that a captain at his current airline would do that to him, just to give him a taste of his own medicine.
 
The places I've flown where we go in and out of the same hub, we usually swap at the outstation. At the airline I worked for where most trips went through multiple hubs, we would just swap every other leg. At the AMCI carrier I worked for, the Captain would ask if anyone needed landings and then 90% of the time didn't care who flew after that.
 
I've had Captains do all sorts of things to help decide. Definitely seen my fair share of rock, paper, scissors, and one captain in particular is a big fan of high card/low card. He always lets the FO pick high or low, then both draw. It keeps things interesting each leg.
 
The airline I flew at was all over the place...some guys took first leg, some guys took second, some guys asked what you wanted. Scheduling built trips that were so inefficient you would be proud of them for their lack of effort - so it was all but guaranteed that at some point during the trip, a DH was going to flip flop everything around. FO set up the FMSs and built the flight plan (no ACARS). The older Captains tended to have less captain-syndrome and would grab walkarounds during bad weather, etc. Great crews for the most part.

Where I work now, we take legs based on whatever we feel like (mainly how tired we are) and try and keep the times roughly split. If it's your leg, you do everything from preflight to flying to ATC, and the other guy sleeps.
 
I had a 6 landing day yesterday and after splitting the first two turns, we were trying to decide who would fly the outbound leg on the last turn. I ended up flipping a penny that somebody had left on the center pedestal, probably for just that reason.
 
We're pretty much the same as @Polar742. I guess most long haul ops are the same, whoever needs the landing gets it. PF does the box, ACARS, etc., PM or Relief guy does the walk and in our case, the Second Officer eats the pre flight sandwiches.
 
Something to note.

At the airline @CaptBill and I work for, during our CRM/TEM class they highly recommend that the Captain has the First Officer fly the first leg of a trip. Turns out it is safer to have the First Officer fly the first leg as a high proportion of accidents occur first leg of a trip and with the Captain as the pilot flying
 
Seggy said:
Something to note.

At the airline @CaptBill and I work for, during our CRM/TEM class they highly recommend that the Captain has the First Officer fly the first leg of a trip. Turns out it is safer to have the First Officer fly the first leg as a high proportion of accidents occur first leg of a trip and with the Captain as the pilot flying
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I wonder where our old airline got the CRM/TEM material. :)
 
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