Originally Posted by
Enzo999
I have to say I absolutely do not recognise the BA you are describing. It has many faults of which I am happy to complain about, but the vast majority of SH captains I fly with are just looking for an easy day out. I can’t remember the last time I gave or listened to a LHR brief. Now, I do get tired of talking about life time allowances, Tapered annual allowances or massive tax bills but other than the occasional bit of deluded narcisism the guys are generally great.
As for the discussion about who is better, unless you have a solid job offer from both it’s a redundant argument most people don’t get the choice. All I will say is having worked for 4 bankrupt companies I have never felt more secure in my job and with a family to look after nothing in the world is more valuable than that.
I'm aware of the BA being described above - and yes it's driven by a training department largely run by people who have never, ever done anything else - BA cadet, BA TFO, BA TC , BA flight training management.
Massive confirmation bias as everything they do agrees with everything they've seen but they don't realise they've never really seen much. 10,000 hours flying the same aircraft for the same operator under the same micromanagement isn't actually "experience" in any meaningful way.
Anyhoo - day to day I don't see the above too much, but then I've got a bit of seniority and fly with more senior, pragmatic guys and many ex BMI skippers. I hesitate to make sweeping generalisations, but maybe the guys seeing the issues here (which ARE very real and do exist) are junior FO's flying with Junior skippers freshly indoctrinated by the training department? who know's why there's such a marked difference of experience.
FWIW my breif into LHR is "what's different about today? what's my fuel bottom line off the hold?". I can't see that anything else is needed - nobody has built any new mountains , nobody has changed euclidean geometry (so the 2500 foot point on a 3 degree ILS is always in the same goddam place!). I've rarely if ever had a skipper quesiton that - but again, maybe my seniority avoids the people who would question it..