Hi Woolfgang,
In BA there were 24 but now 34 pay points in each rank. When you join BA you start on PP1 and move up one level each year on the anniversary of your date of joining. On the 34 PP scale each increment is worth about £1750 before tax.
On the old PP24 scale First Officers were frozen on reaching PP18 if they failed to bid for a command. This stopped people sitting in the right hand seat taking alot of money without stepping up to take some extra responsibility.
The new bid results came out yesterday so BA will now have an idea of where the gaps in the year to come will be. As always there will be vacancies on the A320 as people move up to long haul as shown by the phone calls last week. The more interesting question is whether there will be any long haul gaps.
The only successful LH bids were onto the 777, 787 and 380 so if bids off the 757 and 747 (onto those 3 types or command upgrades) exceed the drawdown of the 75 and 74 then there maybe gaps. How BA square the circle of seniority and unsuccessful bids onto the 74 and 75 and then recruiting DEPs I have no idea.
Flight deck chat suggests that there may be DEP recruitment in the spring, but that was last weeks plan.
All the best.