Originally Posted by
dirk85
Rosters can depend from country to country. UK and most of the network is 5/4/5/3 (5 on/4 off/5 on/3 off), in other countries (Italy) it is either 5/4 (with one month of random roster per year) or random for extra money. A few different variations.
In Germany at the moment there are two bases, both in Berlin (Hamburg is closing): Shoenefeld and Tegel. Shoenefeld has around 10 planes, and Tegel has just been opened following Air Berlin going out of business. TXL will have 25 planes within the end of the year, so yes, two big bases. Stability is anybody's guess, the company traditionally does not have a problem to close bases that are not profitable enough or worse losing money.
I am in Italy right now.
Not many DEC are hired (less than 50 last year), from a purely statistical point of view it is easier to join as FO and then upgrade (with the required experience it can take as little as 1 year to start the command process).
Hmmm that's what I thought about DEC/FO. But right now this is my place, I jut got the ERJ job, and could probably get an upgrade in 1 year. Old experienced captains you can learn from, retired from 3 decades in p121.
5/4 is actually nice. But those 5/3....long term must be hard on the body, going up and down 6 times or so per day. Long duty days I'd imagine.