Pub User,
apart from those of us who were at the bottom of the jmc (Thomas Cook) seniority list after 9/11 who were handed redundancy notice...........................and the Chief Pilot and Boeing Fleet Manager who have apparently left..........................
I consider myself to be with a much better employer in Britannia. Package is excellent, including one of the best final salary pension schemes on the market (Thomas Cook's is closed), rostering is fantastic with virtually no changes (unlike Thomas Cook), route structure has a mix of short and longhaul with 757 and 767s to fly (In Thomas Cook you can only do longhaul on the Airbus A330), a very varied flying program with bidding for some great extras (such as Corsair routes this summer to many of the former French colonies), management/pilot relations are good (through strong partnership where the management listen to Balpa) and incentives such as flexible working have been adopted by the company which saves millions in sub charter costs and puts a proportion into pilots pockets whilst providing the roster stability that all charter crews desire, excellent training that is second to none and a great bunch of fellow pilots who have very little to moan about...........................oh and laptops for all pilots with manuals, performance, rosters and much more (including your own workspace and internet connection.)
Can't compare with Monarch, but true, you don't hear too many bad things about them. The other charterers are definately playing catch up though, jmc pilots (as was) were always using Britannia as the benchmark for what they could negotiate out of management.
DHL were also a reasonable employer although night freight is night freight and you can't get away from that. They looked after you, but the pension wasn't up to much and for guys with low hours it was going to take you a month of Sundays to build any hours at 350 per annum. All the sectors were short and some of the crew rooms were grotsville. Whatever floats your boat though...........
As for Air2000, well, they wouldn't be my employer of choice having spent 6 months on loan to them. Relationships with management were particularly poor, rostering was attrocious with as much disruption that was humanly possible to get and they dumped pilots as soon as they could after 9/11 only to find themselves short at the start of the next summer season, only to offer summer only contracts to those who were laid off. Business yes, but firefighting would have appeared to be a more apt business for them to have been in! Hell, they even started aggressively searching cabin crew back in the crew room and suspending them left right and centre for half drunk bottles of water taken off the a/c, 14p found in the bottom of one girl's handbag (presumably they tried to make out she had nicked this from the bar takings!) and all in all it couldn't have been much worse.
So, there's my views on it.
PP