Thinking of Leaving Charter Airline. Where should I go?
I currently work as a senior first officer for one of the UK charter airlines. I'm on the Boeing 757 which is great to fly but I find the lack of rosta stability very frustrating. Days off dont work to a fixed pattern and we have to submit our day off requests about 3 months in advance so it can be very difficult to make plans.
I find it frustrating to be called out on standby to go to work out of another base for a few days. I'm also not a great fan of a 4 hour coach ride back to base through the middle of the night after a 6 hour sector. During the summer of this year, I received on average 1 to 3 rosta changes per week. There seems to be an expectation that we will happily go into discretion in order to do the Egypt flights. About 50% of all my egypt days have gone into discretion. Finally, I find it tough to make the transition from very early flights that are then sometimes followed by two night flights.
The plus side to the job is that there is quite a lot of time spent on standby in the winter that I dont seem to get called.
I just feel that the charter business is not for me. I find the long sectors extremely boring (long haul is not for me!)
Does anyone have any suggestions of where I should think about going? Some kind of rosta stability would be good. I've been thinking about easyjet as the salary is about the same (more after sector pay) and they operate a fixed rosta pattern. They also have a much quicker time to command that my current place of work.
Any suggestions?