Originally Posted by
Falling_Penguin
Thanks Wiggy. It seems a shorthaul contract would require relocating to the South of England within car-commuting distance. I am struggling to see how it would be possible to be SH and commute from farther away, especially with the airport standby requirement in there.
Is it fair to assume that being junior on the longhaul fleet would bring similar issues? I have read about junior LH pilots doing 5 trips away a month with 2-3 days between each; back-to-backs eradicated under EASA. `The difference in housing / mortgage fees would be less than the amount required for commuting + hotels at that rate.
The realities of a short haul commute etc is probably best left to someone who works that "aisle"
Workload on Long Haul is a "hot" discussion issue ATM, for the reasons you describe....lots of low credit, minimum turn trips on some fleets. There are some nasty rosters out there and for completeness I'd say it's not all of it is low hours, 2-3 day trips either, I've flown with a couple of P'2 s this month whose December rosters were fairly well loaded up with Long Range work with minimum turn round taking them (involuntarily) well over the CAP target..
"Back to backs" (in the commonly accepted sense of the term)
are still possible under EASA/at BA/under JSS, either by careful selection of the first trip of a pair to avoid anything requiring more than 1 nights rest post the duty (so for example you try and generate a pair of trips which has a TLV or e.g. an African trip as the first element), plus there are a handful of selected trip pairs on some fleets involving the Eastern seaboard where if you get a tagged trip pair the company will provide accomodation, which then to allows a back to back under EASA. That's the theory, the problem is using JSS to actually construct such a bid, and secondly having the seniority to get such a bid awarded....
(Edit to add: Another hot topic is the amount of reserve a new joiner ends up doing....expect to be clobbered frequently in your first year...)