In a rapidly expanding airline, in a dynamic economic enviroment there are limitations as to what sort of forward planning is available to the recruitment dept. at easy. Given that promises have been broken in the past (due to the above), it was decided to be upfront about the situation and not make any promises that we sould not keep.
The reality is that most are transfered to their prefered base quickly but given the different sizes and need to fill bases as the arise (and the internal promotion demanded) it is not hard to see the sort of problems we are up against.
Therefore the company has tried to be as up front about this as possible and says in effect that we will try to give you your prefered base but if we can't do it immeadiatlely then you can (seniority free) join the line for your preference.
So far it has worked okay. It has not affected the quality of candidate whatsoever in fact there is a chance that it has sorted out the more suitable candidates.
If you do some research you will find that as most of the bases have not been around that long there is noone that has been really badly affected by this basing policy.
You know what the deal is, if you don't like it go somewhere else because there are some really good guys out there who are ready to take on the challenges that are offered by working for a short haul, low cost, pan european airline.
If the choice is yours you potentially have a great future.
good luck.
NG (for now, A319 soon!)
PS what base are you after anyway?