Probably is the right forum as it’s of interest to people applying for jobs, although tbh I expect most out of work pilots would sign a contract with the devil at the moment, especially if they’re not type rated.
Before I start I will just say that 1. Jet2 have a social media policy which says that employees shouldn’t mention that they work there on social media and 2. I’m a member of BALPA. That’s important because this story in the independent had almost certainly come from BALPA. For those that don’t know BALPA only have recognition at J2 because they went to ACAS when the company refused to recognise them. There has been a continual battle since as the company will only negotiate on the absolute minimum things which they have to, and refuse to enter into discussions about rostering. This stance seems to be to the advantage of the pilots in some ways, as the company generally gives fairly generous pay increases very early in the negotiating process so that BALPA can’t claim to have negotiated it.
The rostering /fatigue issues are a different subject and my experience will be different to others and will depend on seat and base. But my experience this summer is that, if I worked for them, apart from a period of disruption for a few weeks in May / June is that it’s no better or worse than any of the six other airlines I’ve worked for. If I have concerns about discretion I can call crewing and refuse to work into it which I have done, and had no comeback. I’ve submitted a future fatigue report once this summer and my roster was changed as a result and the only communication was the roster change and an email from crewing saying that they agreed with my concerns. We had an email from BALPA a couple of days ago saying that some of the problems had been caused by inexperienced crewing officers, and I suspect that is true, a few times I’ve spoken to them and had to quote the rules of the crewing agreement, but I’ve done that and spoken to crewing supervisors and problems ha e been sorted. Just like other places I’ve worked.
At some point someone is going to come on here and go on about me drinking “the company cool aid”. As a general principle I would like to see more cooperation with the union, but bearing in mind what this thread is about I’m prepared to put up with it this summer because of the unusual world events of the last two years.
and the bad news for some people reading this is that crew gossip says there were 4000 applications for approximately 100 DEP positions, so it looks like plenty of other people will put up with it too.