Sorry guys - I just do not buy this. The overwhelming majority of Gatwick-based easyJet Captains are not working themselves to death at this time of year. If you are a Trainer you may only do 2 or 3 flying days in a month plus 8 sims (my January roster has one rostered flight on it!). Let me ask one simple question - how many duty hours have you worked in the last 12 months and how many of those were home standby duties? You show those figures to anyone working in the City and they would bite your hand off.
Lord Spandex Masher - I think you probably work for FlyBe, and it appears you are earning well (senior Captain on the Embraer by the sound of things). I would have to say that your current roster is simply unsustainable. FlyBe have terrible load factors and are in a financial mess. Someone somewhere is going to have to sort that pretty quickly or it will be game over. Any solution to their problems will likely involve pay cuts, new roster agreements etc. For all easyJet's ills, and there are undoubtedly problems there, it is financially as safe as any airline can be. For that alone I am extremely grateful and very wary of jumping ship. There will always be people who will stay with a particular employer for a whole variety of reasons - that is great if you are one of those folks. It would, however, be true to say that if easyJet were to start a proper recruiting policy and take a pile of pilots from FlyBe, they would empty overnight. You could reasonably argue the same about easyJet - if BA were to look for 1000 pilots tomorrow then we would empty overnight. That is the key to assessing the best employers and seeing where a Company is in the pecking order of life. I have no doubt that specifically Emirates, BA and Cathay Pacific are higher up the pecking order than easyJet as an employer. I would place easyJet in pole position within the second tier. I would have to say that I place FlyBe substantially lower - in the third or fourth tier. That is not to knock them but to recognise the harsh realities of where people would wish to work if they had the chance. Whatever you like - decent (ie saleable) type ratings (Boeing or Airbus), good overall salary, 5/3/5/4 working pattern, job security etc , I would strongly suggest that easyJet is a great place to be. No one can yet name me a specific and better employer outside Emirates, Cathay and the legacy carriers that they would wish to work for. I am not trying to be 'Agent Orange' here - I am just recognising that the picture painted by 'as good as it gets' is simply not a reflection of how the overwhelming body of easyJet Captains see their jobs.