It is up to the readers here whether they pay attention to my comments - it is no skin off my nose either way. What I can say is that I have worked for easyJet for more than 20 years and have a fairly good idea about what life is like here. The danger here is this degenerates into easyJet internal politics - best kept to our own forum frankly. I presume this particular thread exists because people want to know the deal at easyJet. The figures above are accurate - how you process them is up to the individual reader. There has never been a better time to be an Airbus pilot than right now and it has made competition for pilots very keen - great news frankly for us all. Presumably, if you are offered a better overall deal elsewhere that is where you will go - we will all wish you well.
Anyway, the issue of 'pay restoration' was very controversial in that, depending on who you listen to, it would have been necessary to achieve a pay rise of around 24% (the exact number is a matter of some debate, but go with it for the purpose of the argument). This is due to a Covid pay freeze, loss of two months' salary and a very poor two-year deal during at time of high inflation. The concept of 'pay restoration' was to get back what we lost during that whole process of around the last 4 years. To run a successful industrial action campaign, we would have required around 85% support from the pilots as a minimum. The initial vote was, unfortunately, much closer that nearly everyone expected - just over 50% voted to reject the first deal. I personally had voted 'No' originally, but 'Yes' for the second offer as it was apparent no real appetite existed for further conflict. My fellow colleagues will not necessarily agree with this, but my own view was that, given the clear unwillingness of the pilot body to take the battle to industrial action, to continue the fight beyond where we were was potentially very damaging to us. My subsequent conversations with a number of colleagues have reinforced that view as a significant number of them would never have gone on strike, leaving us in a very difficult position. My 'Yes' vote was not a willing one, but a pragmatic one. I am not particularly happy about the situation, but we had little room to manoeuvre. Again, that is a personal opinion that is not meant to represent the whole body of UK pilot opinion. Nonetheless, now the battle is over, I do not see the result as the disaster that some people do. Another factor that made the final deal less popular than it might have been was that it was a 3-year deal. I retire soon and it does not affect me but, for what it is worth, in our cyclical world that third year deal may yet seem very attractive. Love it or hate it, the deal above as I stated previously is accurate - you can make your own minds up if it is good enough to make you apply to easyJet. If you do not, there are plenty of other great opportunities out there at the moment.