I believe there is a serious change on the horizon within BA wrt seniority for command. At the moment, there are a considerable number of First Officers who are happy to sit in the right hand seat of a long haul aircraft and wait it out for a long haul command, rather than spend time as a short haul Captain. This means that traditionally, short haul commands are considerably less junior than long haul commands. These FOs who sit in the right hand seat have generally achieved their long haul command by about pp19 or 20 at the latest, and so have usually only experienced maybe one or two years of frozen pay at pay point 18. However things have changed considerably with the age legislation changes. Captains staying on for a further ten years means that the average pay point for getting a command is increasing considerably. Long haul FOs have always had a financial choice to make; bid for all available commands or accept a pay freeze on pay point 18. However, for NAPS pilots, this is a serious taxation issue now! About five years from now, a long haul command is very unlikely to occur much before pay point 24. If that long haul FO now hangs about and waits for a long haul command (without bidding for short haul), he/she is going to end up jumping from pay point 18 first officer pensionable pay to pay point 24 captain pensionable pay. For someone who has paid average contributions into NAPS, that is going to result in a tax bill in excess of £150k (yes you read that correctly). With the coming year's reduction to an annual allowance of 40k (and very likely 30k sometime within the next five years), there is literally going to be no unused allowance available, and so £150k cash is going to have to be found! Couple this with the pay point 18 freeze for at least 6 years rather than the current one or two, and you have a very very strong incentive to keep bidding for ALL available commands even for the most die hard long haul FOs. This is going to make the differential between long haul and short haul command seniority narrower than ever before. I think we could easily be looking at pay point 22 as the earliest point to obtain a short haul Heathrow command... And we'll have a lot of 'long haul' pilots very begrudgingly sat in the left hand seat of a short haul aircraft. Either that, or we'll have a lot more career FO's who can't afford to take a command due to the resultant tax bill, so they will sit on pay point 18 for the rest of their careers.
(Note. This is my own opinion and does not in any way reflect the opinion of my employer)
Last edited by GS-Alpha; 22nd Oct 2013 at 11:27.