4468,
No I'm not with Monarch but another UK charter, so forgive the handle. I'm inn my first year. Over the summer, my take home will be around the £4k mark. I'll be flying around 70-80 hours then come winter that will be down to 20. I'm based out of a small base which despite living 30 miles from takes me 35 minutes to get to door to door (house door to crewing room door). That's a massive plus for my personal situation.
I honestly consider myself to have one of the best jobs in the country in terms of graft vs reward. Trutfully, even in summer, we hardly work. Just by flying to Turkey twice a week we reach company flight time limits. The quality of life I get by getting back home each evening (well at least 9/10 times) AND by not being worked into the ground by flying 4 sectors a day (we do a max of 2, occasionally 3) is amazing.
There is the prospect of mixed fleet or longhaul flying within 3-5 years too. Command time is comparable.
That's a lot of good stuff to give up for BA and many agree. I was all up for re-applying to BA just a few months ago (they've called me back earlier than expected) but I no longer feel it's for me due to the above reasons.