K T
In direct response to some of your questions:
BA would be the sensible move, but I'm not sure about the long period (effectively life for me, as I am over 40) as FO.
The maximum retirement age is now 65, so if you're mid forties then you will have say 20 years in the airline. Difficult to say, but are you likely to get a long haul command? Is this what you would like or would you be happy to stay shorthaul and pick up a command earlier?
If I were to give a prediction, a shorthaul command is more than likely in your time period, not too sure about a longhaul command though, depends on the level of expansion versus stagnation in pilot workforce.
Nice lifestyle, moderate workload, but pay a little below the norm and long term prospects very uncertain.
If you're at LGW, not a great bidding system so not much control over your lifestyle. LHR much better control, work very hard on shorthaul due to the pain of operating in and out of LHR. A modification to our bidline system to be very shortly voted through, I may stand to be corrected, which in theory will bring some added benifits to bidding and hence lifestyle.