Originally Posted by
Daddy Fantastic
Would a BA pilot mind explaining what JSS is and how SH and LH monthly trips work on a pilot schedule. Im not employed by BA so am keen to understand the rostering system.
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At the risk of sounding flippant but in fact trying to be totally honest I’d say there are at about 4000 people who would also like to understand exactly how the rostering system known as JSS is going to work at BA ..i.e. most of the current pilot workforce.
It’s a trip preferencing system where supposedly you can express options for trips, days off, start times...blah blah..system works it’s way down the pilot seniority list trying to satisfy preferences in some way shape or form...the system is supposed to be introduced in about 4 weeks time so that the rosters it produces will be the one’s we are working to w.e.f. 1 Jan.
However:
At the time of writing there has been a first attempt at a dry run where there were insufficient participants to produce meaningful output, so we have no idea what those rosters would have looked like.
We then had a second dry run where there seems to have been a problem producing results..we are promised them any day now but as of yet nothing - so nobody has any idea what those rosters would have looked like.
We have been promised a third dry run before the system goes live for the January bid.......time is short.....
And now you know about as much about JSS as most of us do......
I read a lot about 5 and 6 trips a month but at 900 hours a year one can fly 75 hours a month so I fail to see how you do 5 or 6 LH trips a month unless you are flying 6 hour legs.
..and guess what? We fly 6 hour legs...
For those still wearing rose tinted glasses a warning.. Longhaul at BA is not all 10-14 hour plus sector lengths such as Singapore, Buenos Aries and Hong Kong etc
..Leaving aside the occasional outliers that appear on the 777 or 744 rosters as daytrips such as Madrid and Moscow BA longhaul covers the likes of:
Tel Aviv ( 5 hours, plus or minus), Cairo, (sometimes, 5 hours ish)
Abuja/Lagos/Accra/ Boston,/Montreal and countless others at around 6 hours, plus or minus.
Now the senior guys might pick up two or three Longish sector round trips in the month and then perhaps a short trip to finesse the hours..that works fine....OTOH if you get clobbered with a month of low flight time trips you need to do a lot of days and nights at work to achieve the target hours.