I really enjoy working for them.
Nearly 7 years in with a fleet transfer approaching.
Served my time getting mediocre rosters but as others joined after me things got better .... as advertised. Thing that gets my blood pressure up is - if this thread stopped right now everything you need to know is in the public domain, the good, the bad and the ugly. Don't join and then say 'oh I thought it'd be like xyz'
BA is what you make of it - even the rare 3 hour hang around (which I too dislike). I handle it by going up into the terminal (ie away from said suicide inducing cafeteria) logging on to the free company wifi and watching an episode Game of Thrones or Mad Men whilst wearing my Bose headset in absolute tranquility.
Or I do all my crappy 'life admin' on the company's time - so my days off aren't full of "I must get round to ...."
I try and keep in perspective what I've heard on the rumour mill over the years vs what has then actually transpired. Eg hotel changes - Geneva doom and gloom (we moved from the Kempinski), you would have thought it was as if we'd just heard the three minute warning. As it turned out the Novotel has balconies, a free soft drink mini-bar, Xbox 360 (if that's your thing), big comfy bed, skin flaying power shower. Compared to Kempinski where a coffe costs 7 Swiss Francs and the rooms are tired old 'airline crew' rooms. This is an example of rumour vs what actually happened.
As per the pilot/cabin crew thing. I actually like not going out with cc! You have the same GroundHog Day conversation and spend the evening dancing round being polite, sizing up, being pc ... boring/tiring/monotonous. Don't get me wrong I've had some very funny evening and stand overs. In fact even with the nicest fd colleague, on a two nightstop tour I will only join him/her for drinks/dinner one night - I've been sat next to them joking/bantering/talking/ putting the world to rights all day after all.
Re the training. Generally very good. Learn early to play the game. Ask lots of open questions, get the others persons inpu before stating your own position, set gates (or better yet get your pal to set them), succinctly verbalise your thoughts/mental model (nobody ever said you had to be a mind reader to be a multi crew pilot). Let the BA way wash over you, don't fight it, once you do sim checks go much smoother.
I take the autopilot out every other day and hand fly it down from 10-20,000 ft. Sometimes with the birdy, sometimes not. Nobody bats an eyelid. My fd colleagues are almost universally good/fun/polite/interesting people. My Stage 2 iBid avoid list has 8 people on it (call that one person per year). And not all of them are spiteful - there's Mr Boring, Mr Its all about me, Mr Body Odour. Whatever people think of BAs selection process the people who get through seem to almost always get along and make the day fun, yes backgrounds differ, age differences, lifestyle choices, hobbies but most people just want to do the trip ASR free and blow the froth of a couple of cold ones.
Management. Most are politicians and should be viewed as such. And on the rare occasion they work-the-room in CRC assume that the moment they've gone back to their desks they will be plotting and scheming Blofelt style (minus the cat) - we're all grown ups and to assume otherwise, or for that matter any other company is any different is bordering on naive.
The salary is good and my wife and I (she works too, nothing airline related) have a lifestyle that people our age dont normally have. 4 bed house in the home counties, 2 normal cars (fiestas), eat out twice a month, go on city breaks, take two nice far flung holidays a year - sat in club or first normally. My take home pay is ~4700/month and that taking into account max pension contribution (barp) plus monthly AVCs. Somebody said to me near,y ten years ago "CB old boy, the golden age is over, but try not to get married too many times, drive normal cars, don't thirst for a Tag/Omega watch and if by age 45 (still a fair few years away) you can't live on 7k a month then it's you who've *****d up not the company you work for"
I still think there's a lot of truth in those words. True, this isn't the 50s and BA isn't PanAm dishing out free Ray Bans (although they use to) and Rolex's. I'm an airline pilot, that's it, no more, no less. I hopefully garner some respect from the people I encounter (cc, staff, pax) not based on my uniform but based on how I speak to them and or how I conduct myself/handle the situation at hand. That a wally occasionally says to me at a dinner party 'you're like a bus driver' doesn't irritate me a bit. People with brains know (at least on a basic level) that our job involves a lot more than pushing a big red button labelled 'Start.'
Re rosters/bidding ... I guess if you choose to live abroad and come in for trips (always seemed a bit of a ball ache to me) then new EASA rules mean that potentially there's a storm on the horizon. As for crazy 5/6/5 nonsense imho LHR logistically could not facilitate that - ground teams, holding, cleaning, taxying, physically swapping planes, cc swaps - I'm gonna go out on a limb and do a Paddy Ashdown.....
I bid about 2 hours above cap each month and this tends to keep me safe from forced assign - not ideal but it has so far worked for me. When I feel jaded I bid just above wiping level and accept a crappy shift will most likely still get added - nonetheless I will work below cap by a decent margin and have a more sedate month.
As for my outlook on the future. BA constitutes a portion of my life, let's call it a third. Wife,family,friends, interests, house projects the other two thirds. I think you'd be mad to grab a short haul command at the first opportunity as there is so much to explore within the BA framework. The wally:good person ratio if hugely in the latters favour.
Yes I like working for BA but I'm aware that like everything in life 'some fleas come with the dog'
CB