Re: Life at ThomasCook?
topgear
I have been with TC for 5 years or so.
It would be fair to say that things are not brilliant currently, however they could also be a lot worse.
It is NOT TRUE that we have been balloted for strike action. I will explain more momentarily.
TCUK is a profitable organisation, however we do have a large summer vs winter imbalance in what our aircraft do. In order to address this imbalance, the company are looking to make savings in various areas.
One such area is crewing our G regd' aircraft with some American Captains next summer (thereby avoiding promoting our own guys permanently) and achieving a cost saving that way. BALPA did issue us with an INDICATIVE ballot to see what the feeling was on this issue.... and to see if it came to the crunch, whether the pilots would have the resolve to PERHAPS take industrial action AS A LAST RESORT.
Overwhelmingly, we said we would.
TCX management are now aware of the strength of feeling and are discussing openly what options there are with our colleagues on our BALPA CC.
Other areas that may create savings that have been discussed:
Wet leasing a couple of U.S.A. a/c for summer only,
Temporary Summer Commands and
Temporary Summer only First Officers.
Other issues historically have been:
Time to Command
Awful rostering when things don't go right (i.e all summer)
You will likely go on the B757. It is very difficult to get a cross fleet move to Airbus now. It will be 6 or 7 years until you get senior enough for a 330 course now I guess from the Boeing fleet. It will be 10 years plus to Command. There are NO SHORTCUTS.
On a plus side, the fleet management are excellent guys, we have a new chief pilot who is well respected and things hopefully may change for the better.
In essence, if you think it will be much better than easyJet, you may be right, you may be wrong. Factor in nightflights and zero weekends off in Summer........
And I think you will be offered a temporary summer contract too..... sad, but there we go.