Many of our LH senior copilots, simply can’t stomach the idea of a SH command. They’d prefer a smaller pension, or at the very least, pushing it to the last possible opportunity.
I’m not sure ‘can’t stomach’ is the right phrase. We have simply for whatever reason, favoured the long haul lifestyle just like many have before us. It doesn’t have much to do with being senior, other than that you generally need a bit of seniority to get a move to long haul if you’re not fortunate enough to be recruited directly onto a long haul fleet. Suggesting long haul is too comfy is just incorrect. Some long haul fleets have it easier than others it is true, but to make the blanket statement that long haul is comfy in BA is wrong. Most on my fleet believe part time is the only way they’ll be able to stave off fatigue in the long term.
The top of the seniority long haul SFOs will unlikely now start bidding for short haul commands, because that would freeze them off a long haul command for five years and that’s where they really want to be. The more junior NAPS SFOs will probably just bid for short haul commands immediately (if they value their pensions over their current lifestyles - although I suspect many won’t, because they don’t totally believe they’ll ever receive the pension). It is the middle ground who will probably wait a year or so before starting to bid for short haul commands, just to see how things are looking and whether they might just squeak a long haul command in time. They are the one ones who are taking a little bit of a gamble and may end up losing out if there is a bit of a downturn in command availability.
However overall, I think all of the above means there will probably be very limited availability of new LHR commands to any BARP seniority pilots for the next five years (after 2018). There will also be several (although not all) pp16 capped LGW Captains bidding for LHR too. I suspect the only short haul command availability to BARP seniority pilots will be at LGW.