I'd like to echo the comments made about seniority - it really is king in BA. Personally, I'd look at the long game and take the first start date offered to me, regardless of fleet.
If you do end up in the fortunate position of having the choice between longhaul and shorthaul then you need to have a serious think about how much weekends mean to you. At the bottom of any bidline fleet weekends will be hard to get off. The big (huge!) difference is that on the airbus you'll have people joining below you straight away, so life will start to slowly improve immediately.
On the Jumbo however, most training onto the fleet will be done internally so you can expect to spend 5 years with very little increase in seniority. That translates to working most weekends (bar the 10 or so you get with annual leave). If you can live with that then by all means go for it but you need to be realistic about the kind of lifestyle you can expect. Whatever you do, don't join on the Jumbo and then whinge about the seniority system and how you get no weekends off! That's a sure fire way to get on peoples nerves!
Last edited by BusDriverLHR; 10th Mar 2011 at 13:14.