Can only speak for EF:
Cons:
- Airline is painfully under crewed.
- Prepare to fly up to 6 days in a row starting with earlies ending in nights followed 2 off, 3 if you’re lucky.
- 10 days off per month but realistically this will be the maximum you’ll get.
- Pretty bad salary and conditions for the workload and expectations placed on us.
- Fatiguing workload with poor/badly worded company scheduling agreements
- You will work to the maximum as allowed per Core flight time limitations.
- Regular roster changes to the published schedule with no rhyme or reason. Often changing earlies to lates and vice versa so often you won’t have much chance to plan your life ahead.
- 11 hour home standbys so you might find your 0600 HSBY turning into a 2100 or later off duty time, thus knocking out the rest of your week.
- Bidding system is flawed.
Pros:
- Home every night, no nightstops
- Friendly colleagues
- If you’re willing to wait 5/6 years, LHR opportunities will be down the road.
- Lots of opportunity for overtime if you’re desperate to fly, but the payments aren’t the best and generally aren’t worth it.
Like I said, can only speak for EF, this was the case when I left a few months back. The only benefit I could see to going would be as mentioned above, getting an early place on the MSL, but there’s a high turnover, from LHS in particular, the mostly cadet/wizz FOs are more willing to sit through this nonsense for years.
I hope things are different nowadays.