Originally Posted by
VariablePitchP
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
The people doing 1-2 years at LGW were mostly guys forced from mainline coming back. It seems to be quite rare now for EF people to come to LHR considering how short staffed they are.
its about 3-4x more into their pension than Wizz (FO-TCP all receive the same (although they might have fixed this now so it’s uncapped) unless they sal sacrifice to get the higher match (which should be done)
BAEF is the same as Wizz, they want you doing as close to 900 as possible, so work life balance is just as bad, if not worse as you can get a fixed roster with Wizz at least.
For reference, it will take you 22 years as a SH captain at BA Mainline to match PP11 at Wizz (with current pay deals as reference). BAEF will will match Wizz captains first year after being there for 12 years. Regarding FO, you will be on 85-90k at Wizz within 2-3 years depending on how much you fly. That takes 7 years at EF. (This is including their pay rises)
this is in no way me recommending Wizz, my only recommendation is to leave them asap, however it does show how bad the conditions at EF are, even after their new pay deal.
The only benefit EF has is your MSL number, which is a useful thing, but is it worth an unknown amount of years being stuck on some of the worst conditions in the UK (especially if you are 30+ where you won’t be reaching top pay points until the very end of your career)