Originally Posted by
bda321
Here it is in writing:
I do think it will become permanent but I’m not so convinced any vote will lead to the landslide envisaged. A lot of senior people I speak to seem apprehensive. They fear they’ll be paying the price for those at the bottom having better rosters and they won’t have it as cushy as they used to.
Time will tell.
The issue as I see it is it’s not just the people at the bottom that are having these problems, there are plenty of skippers between 1000-1500 whose rosters look like a living hell. There are also plenty of FO’s around my seniority with command fairly close who are looking at those rosters thinking is it actually worth it considering we’d be at the very bottom of the pile? Many of us are between a rock and a hard place (wanting career progression but not at any cost) and are erring towards ‘not at the minute’, especially those with young families.
IMHO these amendments, on paper at least, are game-changing. I don’t believe it’s a case of taking from the top to feed the bottom, these changes are fundamental to the success of the airline going forward. It wasn’t like this under Bidline (where the more junior pilots would have been on blindlines), JSS has changed things fundamentally and I don’t think we can keep going as we have been. For so many reasons a LH trip (particularly 2 crew) followed by 2 days off repeated as far as one can see into the future is completely unsustainable from a health, family life and fatigue point of view. You can see that particular penny has dropped and although I can’t speak for others, I’d say it’s probably the first time in my close to 15 years with the airline where it feels like there is potential for things to actually change for the better rather than being on a constantly downward spiral. The proof will be in the pudding, but at least there’s a pudding to taste for once.
It’s worth nothing that 3 days will be the ‘Minimum’ base turnaround and you can of course end up with more depending on seniority and what you bid for. Having it as a backstop however is a very very welcome change.