Stan Woolley - You left easyJet because you were hacked off and went to Ryanair. That is your perogative, but just remember that the easyJet you worked for is not the one that exists now. It is not perfect and I have never pretented it is, but there is increasingly a huge amount going for it. Listening to you and your loathing of easyJet is rather akin to listening to the ex-Dan Dare guys who can never let it go. I genuinely wish you well at Ryanair, but I also hope that you will not be somehow trapped in a time-warp of believing easyJet is somehow destined never to be anything other than what you experienced. Companies do move on and we are evolving all the time. I am unashamedly glad to be part of it and will do everything in my power to make it work. At the end of the day, your particular beef with easyJet is your problem. In the meantime those that have remained are working hard through a strong BALPA and a very good CEO to make this a company worth working for. I am sorry that was not your experience - but it is increasingly the experience of many at easyJet now.
Nice Touch - what can I say? Try and review what you write before you post and save yourself further embarrassment. Learn some manners mate, learn about life and well....just learn anything you can.
Studi - Ther new rostering period is a 21-week cycle consisting of 5/4/5/3 for 17 weeks and a 4-week random rostering period (the specific 4 weeks are known long in advance). The 28-day period is guaranteed to contain at least 10 days off and finish on 3 days off to in order to transition back to the normal pattern. There is a new £50 payment for any late roster changes (ie any change within 48 hours making start or finish time vary by 2 hours or more). There is no concept of doing sims or anything else in your days off and once allocated no one can touch them. Incidentally, this is only an interim agreement and I think there is a definite chance in the next year or so of 5/4/5/4 for everyone and 4/4 at some bases, but not all. That is all up for grabs but there are real signs of us moving in the right direction. The other thing worth mentioning is that I hardly ever do 5 earlies on the trot - it does happen but once in while, but once you hit max hours that is your lot. More critically, we are also limited to 1880 hours per annum duty, which equates to 40 hours per week averaged out over the working year. That is not bad at all, although the hours are obviously pretty anti-social!
Regarding your question on leave, it is allocated in 5 day blocks (there is a concept of Guaranteed Days Off or 'GDOs' but for the purpose of the discussion just ignore them!). In its simplest form you get the wrap around days off as well. So if you use 10 days leave to get a couple of weeks off you get 3-5-4-5-3 days - ie 20 consecutive days off if that makes sense. You just go onto the computer and request the days you fancy by selecting them off the internet. Leave is actually allocated according to a complex formula which gives you points depending on what you did the previous year. You are given a base positon, ie captain no 35 out of 150 at Luton or whatever, and that gives you a feel for your chances of success in the bidding war. No 1 gets his first choices before anyone else and so on down to the bottom. I got all the leave I asked for this year and was about a third down the list, but not everyone did. In the past, leave allocation was a ridiculous shambles that we should never have had - nonetheless we now have the semblance of a working system.
The only criticism I have is that, unlike just about every company in the world, easyJet have decided to give new joiners priority over existing employees. Basically a new joiners is put in half way into the leave bidding machine. That may be great when you arrive, but it is extremely frustrating and unjust for pilots who may have 10 years' service with easyJet and find a new guy getting priority. I hope that particular failing will be addressed soon.
Anyway, that is how it is - for better or worse!