What's wrong with rostering?
BigL,
I could spend all day on this but I'll try to keep it brief.
The rostering is bordering on the negligent and from a business point of view is totally illogical. We are often away on 12 day duty cycles but end up flying 3 or 4 times, the rest of the time we are on standby (often when there isn't a departure) in crap hotels in HKG and DXB or simply waiting for yet another delayed aircraft. The number of roster changes during a cycle has to be seen to be believed!
No account whatsoever is taken of circadian disruption or the fatigue associated with an East-West route structure. If you haven't flown long haul before then the fatigue is very different to the fatigue associated with multi-sector days. You will often go days without sleeping more than a couple of hours at a time.
Any suggestions to improve the efficiency of the roster are routinely ignored. There is no desire to consider any lifestyle concerns and it seems that the rostering staff would rather give you maximum number of days away rather than compacting duty cycles - for flexibility!!!
I've been here for several years and we have always been short of crew for the style of rostering. 'We're recruiting' is the constant answer but we have not once been able to produce a roster with the right number of crews. This impacts on both the rostering stage and the day to day operations. Bizarre roster patterns emerge and any sickness or disruption has a massive knock on effect that causes chaos for days on end.
I know that FR is an equally poor place to be and initially KA may appear to be a reasonable place to be, if only because it's a change. You will very soon find out that rostering is a shambles, management inept, and pay inadequate. Did anybody mention the screw-up about UK tax?
If you want to leave FR (and I can't blame you!) then think carefully before coming to KA, there are more attractive options elsewhere.