I think the BMI integration would lower the time to command. At least that's what BALPA have been saying!:P
As Tay Cough points out, it
may lower time to a longhaul command, but I think that will only be for a
very brief period, and only for a few people. Of course, longhaul commands take
substantially longer to achieve than the shorthaul commands.
I think BALPA have got it wrong. Airbus shorthaul is now overborne - due to the BMI integration, BA now has too many Airbus captains, and is offering limited voluntary redundancy to them (along with the 747 skippers)
because there are too many of them. Very few are likely to take it up (and at least one man on the BA Company Council, who should have a good feel for this, believes that too!).
Why will this affect time to command? Because the ex-BMI skippers will likely sit on the Airbus for a long time, so there is a substantial portion of the fleet that will not 'move on'. The much-mooted (and yet to happen .....) longhaul expansion will be largely a one-time thing, but once the fleets stabilise from this expansion it will all be back at square one. The overarching influence to all this is the age-legislation
and the taxation monster, which means that many skippers are staying on longer than even many of themselves thought they would. They want to put more value in to their pension pots, but they have to prevent the taxman getting his hands on substantial amounts too. It produces a strange dynamic which, when tied to their position at or near the top of a generous payscale, means they stay longer than they are prepared to publicly admit.
When the dust has settled, I do believe that BALPA's predictions will be
well wide of the mark. There may be a very short-lived but modest acceleration to command, for some (a few) but when the concrete sets it will be back to the very long waiting for the vast majority. IMHO.