Originally Posted by
Seosan
Serious question; may I ask what’s so bad with the rostering at the moment? I work for a large A320 operator in Europe and across this whole summer have had nothing but short notice changes, changes on report, standbys galore, liberal use of discretion etc. I always presumed BA was a more stable ship. Is it just the most junior on the list getting these reserve blocks?
BA rostering is still very stable once the roster is published. SH is being affected by large numbers of cancellations this summer though.
I think what the above are complaining about is
1) the new(ish) rostering preferences system which is not giving as optimum outputs as it had previously - even the very top pilots who should be able to nearly write their own rosters, are now having what they've asked for denied, and instead assigned trips they don't want over days they want off. Admittedly the system has some funny quirks which I can't explain. I'm very junior and don't ask for much, I seem to get about half of what I've requested.
2) the new short (14 day) reserve periods which the company is making the most of, resulting in a reserve period every month for many pilots. This must be very frustrating particularly for commuters and those with responsibilities that need to be planned in advance. But if you don't really mind reserve it's less of an issue.
hopefully you'll get a detailed response from someone at the SH coalface (I'm LH) but I don't see it as bad as some of those who posted above