Thanks for your responses guys.
If I look at it for the Long term, then yep, it makes perfect sense and is a no brainer.
However, the short term is a tiny little niggle... If the salary really does come down to £30100ish, then my take home would be basically around £2k over winter. And utilising an assumption from a previous post, then realistically, it would be around £3k over summer. Averaging, say £2.5k over the course of a year?
However... Having long passed 1500 hours (like many in my company - I've got over X000 hours and X years on turboprops), the upgrade to FO would be reliant on the 500 hours jet surely? Which, looking at the figures, I'd guess there's a chance it would come maybe towards the end of the autumn?
This would help financially a lot, and make it a bit more achievable for me. However, the £7k deduction for 3 years isn't going to help much - especially if I'm recruited on a SO contract for a while. I'm on the wrong side of 30 and the missus is dropping the biological time bomb warnings on me!!
Basically, as it stands at the moment, I can see a massive attraction for the long term, and that sways it significantly (And we're talking really long game here - Max salary for a standard line capt at Purpleplace on the jet is around £78k, something I would be unlikely to achieve given the career limiting quality of the Crew Food here) - but for the short term, even with the deductions, if I knew I could achieve a roughly similar pay to where I am now within a reasonable amount of time, it would nullify my niggle.
The FO base I've read is £47165 - 7000 for "NTR training" and it's actually better than where I am now.
Maybe this is where the companies have us by the short and curlies?
I am wondering though, given that the airline are specifically asking for 1500 hours total time, of which 500 has to be jet/prop/military why they are asking for those requirements when the requirements for an FO upgrade are 1500 hours of which 500 is on a jet.
Either way, the first thing is to be successful in getting the nod for a trip to the assessment, of which realistically the chances are slim. Up until that point, all this post is me thinking aloud to myself about "what if" - and hopefully, if anyone has answers to this random ramble, it'll help me and my colleagues in a similar position a lot!!
Back to the beer!