As someone who has been vocal on these forums about the whole cancer of pay to fly, flexi crew etc etc I can confirm everything AdM has said.
There is NO one year contract then "maybe" a perm position. If you start as a Flexi for the 12 month period then you are on a career path now that will only stop because of something you do dangerously or stupidly. The first 12 months is a probation period, and all of this is now with the involvement of BALPA.
I can understand the concern, I find it hard to trust what EasyJet says at times, that there may just be a whole load of 12 months guys in and out and no one going further than that, but I just do not believe it now, the training costs and risks to the operation are just to big. Progress (some) has definitely been made thanks to the full involvement of the BALPA members in EasyJet to end the shameful over use of the flexi crew pilot at EasyJet. I do wonder myself if the regulator ( ha ), the insurers and maybe the shareholders also were putting pressure on the company to change its ways, but regardless with a lot of pushing, it has been achieved. The result is far from perfect but it is a lot better than what was on the table before. There has been a desire on the companies part to engage with it's pilots on this, probably because someone at Luton saw that BALPA was getting all it's ducks in a row to escalate this dispute if common sense could not be found and many, but not all, of the BALPA campaign aims have been achieved in the NEC.
But you do have to look at what you can get for yourself here, I was looking at the Base transfer lists the other day and on that you can see First Officers who have been CPI'd, this means they are in the process for command selection, some of them were 14 when 9-11 happened! We are now in the deepest depression some would say since after the great war, after 9-11 I was struggling to keep my just gained Turbo prop job and the pain that experienced guys were going through then was incredible and just seeing that in such a short space of time we have guys who were teenagers when 9-11 happened sitting on the CPI list waiting their chance at being in command of a jet and staring at a £100K+ package in the UK puts the 12 months as a flexi pilot with a GUARANTEED permanent position after that in sharp focus, for me at least, against a ghastly real world financial situation in which airlines are not struggling to find pilots.
We can have the Instructing/air taxi, glider tug/turbo prop/regional - jet job vs cadet route all we want, I have my opinion about that and others will have theirs about which way is "best" but the lost potential income when you go down the old route that can/did take many years, coupled with all the uncertainty, before you ever touched a jet and descent salary compared with the financial pain here, to find yourself looking at a laid out career path in EasyJet that will have you as an SFO on a 5354 roster pattern in 4 years and looking at joining that CPI list at around the same time is a very stark comparison.
This is not perfect, and as I said before, I am very vocal and active in condemning the way in which easyjet treats its young new pilots for a whole variety of reasons, but many, not all, of my objections have been laid to rest in the New, New entrant Contract for brand new, very low hours pilots joining our ranks and I hope that the company has learnt a bit of a lesson on how it deals with us as employees, but the jury remains firmly out on that one, as there are other battles than just this one that go on inside EasyJet for those of us already here.
The, as yet, unanswered question is how, and where, the badly needed experienced pilots joining us will slot into the new structure, if their experience is not appropriately recognized then we will miss out on the talent pool that we really want to attract, ex military, ex regional pilots with many thousands of valuable hours of experience in their log book, pilots with experience of multiple types and operators bringing a larger view to the EasyJet world. If we are not careful our target pilots will not be willing to join us on such poor terms, and our "experienced" recruits will all be ex flexi pilots with 2000 hours of airbus 320 time and not much else in their log books.
Direct entry pilots with valuable experience should, IMHO, slot straight in as SFO's and at worst under the old TRSS scheme if not type rated, better yet, lets bond people and we will attract the best candidates, when financing type ratings is not part of the selection procedure.
Lastly, the New, New entrant contract (NNEC?) puts everyone as an employee after 12 months in the UK, which puts each one of those pilots into the BALPA bargaining group. Future improvements can be negotiated now with a strong UNION behind it, and I should certainly hope that each person receiving a NNEC is, or becomes, a member as it is thanks to the current membership, and it has to be said, mainly Captains, who could have taken the "this contract does not effect me" stance that improvements, imperfect as they may be, have been achieved.
EasyJet is a low cost airline, and conducts in business in that hard nosed way, it is far from perfect, but there is not a lot better out there at the moment in the UK at least without substantial risk associated with it. I applaud the way in which Monarch approaches its pilot recruitment, employment and employee negotiations with BALPA, and I wish them nothing but success as they branch out, but to be honest I think EasyJet offers more Job security, right now, than Monarch does and in an uncertain world, job security is pretty high up my list. I may be wrong, time will tell.