Hi Donkey Duke
The reason I say the Airbus is different is that a re-equipping process from 737 to 319 has been going on well over a year now and will continue well into the future. The net effect from an line pilot's perspective is that at Gatwick in particular they have not worked particularly hard compared to the 737 guys. There are a variety of reasons for this such as artificially keeping crew numbers high during transition and the huge line training burden out of Gatwick. As time goes on that will obviously sort itself out as clearly easyJet want all their pilots to fly to the maximum they can. Also because of delays here and there to the arrival of the Airbuses there have been too many 319 pilots and not enough 737 guys as all the 737 guys were being retrained onto the bus thereby puting a big burden on those 737 pilots still on it. Once again and self-evidently this is only a temporary transient which will resolve itself in time. Anyone who has ever been involved in re-equipping will know the rostering nightmares that can occur.
In terms of the work pattern, at the moment I virtually always work out of Gatwick and do not transit through the other bases. In a year I have had 3 days in Berlin and 3 days in Paris - the rest of the time has been in Gatwick. Again, I am only one guy but that is my personal experience.
To complicate the picture further there has just been an announcement today that the next Airbus bases will be East Midlands and Bristol starting soon and finishing by April 2006. That will mean that we have a lot of Airbus bases both in the UK and in mainland Europe - East Midlands, Bristol, Gatwick and Stansted in the UK plus Berlin, Dortmund, Basel and Geneva on the continent. As these bases come on line it seem inevitable to me that crew shortages etc will mean al lot of last minute movement to these other bases to cover flights but I cannot say that with absolute certainty.
I hope that answers the question.
Last edited by Norman Stanley Fletcher; 7th March 2005 at 00:25.