Outstanding post from Tubbylinton. One point made there I think is crucial is due the large recruitment bulge 7 years ago you’re now hearing a lot of opinion from people like you, once outside wondering what everyone is banging on about. You’re now hearing mixed reviews fed back. Like tripadvisor. Those people worked elsewhere prior to BA
When you join, you’re often hear trotted out it’ll get better with seniority. What gets better? The coffee? The staplers in CRC? The money goes up. Well amazing, how much money do you need vs your happiness and homelife? Janet and John jumpers for goal posts and bidline Atlantic barrons are gone. Forget it man, your future is different. What bits of you are you willing to sell? I can’t speak for SH. On Long haul, the rosters don’t really drastically better as you get senior anyway. It’s a bit of a trumped up myth. It’s not like CAP drops for seniors or magical insanely high credit trips appear from a secret special trip box where they keep the functioning staplers. It’s the same flavour of it all to be honest. Maybe an extra day off than junior due pinching the odd higher credit trip and the odd extra weekend off. Nicer destinations if that’s still on your important list after 20 years with a family back home.
It’s all much of a muchness though. It’ll take you centuries to get to that point anyway. FT it’s grinding and relentless. It’s an airline that dreams of getting you to 900. So far agreements can shield that, but for how long? Those agreements are being attacked year after year: it’s like an army relentlessly trying to bust through a castle wall. They’re not letting up or getting bored of firing anytime soon.
LH on the wrong fleet and you’ll be flying trip/2 off/trip before finally getting to maybe 4 off and you sigh relief. Pre covid on the 747 and 777, 6 trips a month was not uncommon. Most weekends gone except for leave. Full time you’ll live for your leave. The mistake people who’ve never flown LH make is counting days off like they do at their SH carriers. That’s not just days off, that’s your entire time at home. Your life. And 2 midweek days off after a LH trip is 1 day feeling Ill with jet lag, doing washing then going away again. You need decent blocks off between LH trips. LH with 2 days off after seems like a grand old time at first, then it hits a few years in. If you’ve an early start and live a few hours away you’ll give over a large amount of your final day off packing your things then travelling to sit in depressing faceless hotel you’re paying for the night prior to work. #LHRissues
SH is.. because it’s based at LHR, kind of the worse of both worlds unless you live outside the perimeter fence. A lot want off SH like they’re covered in ants for a reason. But I’m led to believe from ibid that very senior FOs on SH are making a good go of getting regular weekends off.
The co culture here. It’s got an industrial factory feel and unsurprisingly pompous and quite superior. Not from your fellow crews, they’re generally great people and good as anywhere, just doing their best to get round a day cheerfully as can be. You go into work on a bus from the carpark stuffed with weary old faces travelling in on a Friday morning for a weekend away. You won’t recognise many faces. It’s a place of relative strangers.
Everyone on the line is decent as a whole. Usual odd balls like anywhere. The cabin crew tick along just fine with the pilots.
Everything drips with corporate policy as per large firms. It all operates on a ratchet system. If you hit a trip wire and trigger a policy you get “managed”. For that see “pretend to be nice” system kicks in where reverse psychology works
In the last half a decade it’s been constant. Every 6 months something else. Seeded lines, firm ignoring this or that thing. Bidline going, Give aways in return for not harming existing things, JSS, constantly fiddling with software and IT stuff, wanting yearly working hours to be adjusted (we call it CAP), more agreements being ignored by them.
Rosters are usually fantastically stable, when they don’t have reserve. Caveat- When half your monthly rosters contain reserves, then half your year is made from months that are incredibly unstable. I’m talking sitting in a carpark on a motorway waiting for a call for 21 days in a row (on LH) unstable. We DO have shorter reserves now - half as long. That JSS. No one at that firm has made it through from the bottom to retirement under JSS yet. You’ll be the first. Test pilots. Forget any info on pprune from years ago based solely on bidline, it’s dead.
If you live more than a few hours away from the South East, at local carrier and have a family, early thirties up I’d think carefully. Do not automatically rely on the old aviation sale of BA - best gig in town. It’s a stale mantra that hasn’t been effectively proof tested - people find it very hard to back of this place once they’ve some years chalked on the wall. It becomes a psychological barrier. End of the rainbow syndrome. Money wise perhaps just is the best gig particularly if you join in early twenties. But not to be too hippyish, you better put a price on home life and your health especially if commuting more than a couple of hours. You’ll be sitting as a tail end Charlie an awful long time, on a trajectory that no one has ever ridden ahead. Everywhere is crapper now, just got to choose your brand.
If you’re miserable in a bad bottom feeder company then no doubt it’s better here! But that’s not a great bar to set really is it.
If you’re somewhere half decent already that treat you well and your family and you are happy, but you might just be getting itchy feet..
….choose wisely - it is somewhat of a Faustian pact you’re signing. Like everywhere