Alph Charlie
Well said, most of the moaners are pobably going anyway so I think you will find that the people wanting to come across will be quite laid back about it all. Most of us have done the 6/7 sector days in the past and are not obsesed with willy / airframe and thrust size.
There will be a lot of rubbish spoken about scheduling agrenments and how they inhibit profitability. Bo^*"ks. One of the reason's why Bacon managment couldn't make money was because they could only manage to roster 146 crews for 40% or les of a standard roster. 900hrs in 3 years for one FO. The scheduling agreement didn't cause that. Management complained that the Agreement was hammering them as they couldn't work a small number of 145 pilots past certain upper limits without incurring costs. The CC were always open to looking at these things, but only when managment could show that they could run a half competent rostering system within the rules which didn't result in one group of pilots working literaly twice as hard as another. Hence, the agreement was doing what it was supposed to do by forcing managment to run a tight efficient ship. Unfortunately, they never got anywhere near achieving this.
It was a shame really, siunce we hae a few very good people in rostering. Unfortunately, they were all subject to massive disruption and change as DE hacked away at the bases and were trying to work within systems inherited from good old British airways Regional (BAR). Yes, for a month or two when BAR took control, we were rostered the BAR way. That all had to be unpicked at great expense and with help from the BALPA reps.
i.e. "Why are you now trying to nightstop two crews and airframe in Sumburgh when we have been doing the same schedule with one for years?" The list is endless, but BAR were in control and it had to be done their way. After all their computer said....
Money down the drain.
Also, there was the farcical situation where managment negotiated a special deal with a group of pilots seconded to Bacon which meant that they would only be worked to a level 15%lower than the rest. If they were rostered and accepted work above this to the max levels allowed for the rest of the pilots, they would have gained themselves overtime payments of £6000+ per year. This was sorted out on the quiet by one of our good old BA managers and had he not been trying to be clever by deliberately keeping the BAcon BALPA reps out of the loop, it would have been stopped. As it happened, this didn't become an issue because thanks to the touring roster system, most RJ pilots didn't do much more than 500 hrs per year. Four nights away, five sectors flown etc. The list is endless.
Most of us are just relieved to be getting back to a managment who seem to understand how to operate aeroplanes on regional routes.