Originally Posted by
Potatos_69
BAEF is terrible T&C wise, doing 5-6 years there while being good for the MSL position is going to be bad for your financial and mental health, especially if you need to pay SE UK rental/house prices for being down there...
Virgin wouldn't be a terrible place to be in comparison, and it has much faster times to command than BA for LH now (7-10 compared to 18+) that could be a huge advantage if you want to stay there long term. BA in comparison has terrible salaries for those who want fast commands. LHR SH takes Paypoint 11 to match a Year 1 WUK/EZY/J2 Captain. Paypoint 24/25 to match a Year 10/11 WUK/EZY Captain.
My order for you would be: BA LHR base, Virgin, BAEF/Norse at the bottom. (WUK currently pay better than BAEF, which is a bit embarassing)
WUK do not pay better than EF for their FOs, unless they’ve snuck a 30K payrise in without anyone realising. Particularly when you include the 2024 pay rise for EF, which brings them a lot closer to Heathrow, albeit not quite all the way.
Assuming you never need a day off sick, have no intention of doing anything other than 850+ hours a year on an airbus, and don’t want a pension, Wizz UK might make a bit of sense for a quick command. But when you add it all together with an early command there’s not that much in it for the first few years. WUK then goes ahead for captains by Y12, where you’d sit forever. BA lags but only gets better and clearly surpasses it eventually.
As a data point, a day 1 BAEF FO already gets over 7x more paid into their pension by their employer than a training captain at Wizz UK does. That to me is a pretty massive red flag.
I’d reorder it BA LHR, BA EF, Virgin, Norse. Plenty of people evidently doing 18-24 months at Euroflyer and skipping up the road anyway