Since a major falling out with 'The Management', I rarely frequent PPRUNE these days. Nonetheless, I felt I would briefly return to add my welcome to that of others for our new colleagues from GB. I am a former GB pilot who now flies for easyJet, and am therefore reasonably well qualified to make an accurate comparison between the two companies. There are a couple of slightly negative posts here, as is always the case, and it is inevitable people will feel somewhat anxious at a moment such as this. I would not knock GB in any way but my assessment, for what it's worth, is that easyJet is a much better place to work. Here is my take on it -
Advantages of GB:
1. 775 hours per year.
2. Private healthcare.
3. BA Staff travel (not anything like as good as people like to think).
4. 14.5% pension.
5. Club platters with posh plates!
6. Free newspapers!
Advantages of easyJet:
1. 5/3/5/4 rostering - Trust me, a HUGE benefit and this alone is worth moving for!
2. Better pay overall (you have to be an 11 year Captain at GB to earn more and that includes all benefits above in the package).
3. Better flying - I personally much prefer a 4-sector easyJet day to a Tenerife or Paphos!
4. Better routes - easyJet have a massive range of destinations that just keeps growing.
5. Better aircraft - really new aircraft and the LPC is so much easier than paper perf calcs!
6. Better SOPs - the dreaded monitored approach is gone among other things.
7. Great people to work with. Not to knock GB but the people are one of the massive advantages. There is a genuine friendliness about easyJet that is very infectious.
8. Huge range of bases including several in Europe to live at if you want.
9. Job security - this is about as safe as any airline can be.
10. Annual duty limited to 1880 hours which corresponds to 40 hours per week tops. In reality most LGW pilots fly about 780-850 hours per year and do not work that upper duty limit.
11. Virtually no through-the-night flying - but with you boys about to join us that may all be about to change!
12. Share options and schemes which are turning out to be very lucrative.
13. We have all just been given £3k worth of free shares!
14. Simulator at Burgess Hill instead of Heathrow!
To all those at GB who think this is some sort of disaster, I just want to re-assure you it is not. GB were a great company but easyJet has a huge amount to offer. You would be very hard put to find a better place to work right now than easyJet at Gatwick. I think all of us at Gatwick are delighted to see you join us. I really believe that if you go in with the attitude that you are going to make it work, you will be very pleasantly surprised at how good the future will look like. I genuinely hope that in a few months time you will see this as a blessing in disguise.