Hi Skid
I will try and awnser yr questions one at a time and hope it helps.
1. The sby is 2 hours from the telephone call to being in the office. However crewing are fairly flexible with flt deck, and treat us as responsible adults. I fly out of LHR but live 20 mins from LGW, and get the co. shuttle bus which runs every hour or so. If you just miss a bus 2 hrs is impossible but crewing are understanding and know that you are doing yr best. As long as you make departure time then no worries.
2. Yep monthly sby is on the way soon, and is generally welcomed. It will probably be about 4-5 blocks of sby about 3-5 days long with 2-3 days off in between, but this is just supposition at the moment. I would not be surprised if half of the month gets filled in with trips before the 1st of the month
3. In the 5 years i have been here Australia has been on the cards, which would be a 8-10 day trip, however nothing doing yet. A conversation with a director several weeks ago hinted at the possibility next year providing that 5th freedom rights are av from HKG. Watch this space.
4. All flt deck are London based, although the A340 only flies from LHR, but the B747 flies fairly evenly from both. Where you choose to have your carpark pass is up to you. In practice if you are on the Boeing and park at LHR but are flying from LGW then you have to get the co. shuttle bus. However the guys often swap trips to avoid this.
5. Trip and day off requests are handled on a rotating seniority basis. On the A340 there are 3 groups of F/Os. Each group spends 4 months as top group, 4 in the middle and 4 at the bottom per year. Within each group is date of joining seniority. When in top group you pretty much get wot you want. At the bottom of the req form is a comments section where you can explain that it is yr wifes birthday, kids sports day, etc. and rostering will do their best. On the A340 we are lucky to have a very good rostering lady who always does her best to heip you meet family commitments. I do not know the -400 roster people so can"t comment. Sometimes it is better to ask for an unpopular trip getting back on a Friday to get the Weekend off rather than asking for the actual days off. It depends where you are in the system, seniority wise. You will soon get the hang of the system.
Hope this all helps. Post again if you have any other Q's
