Youthinkso etc, thank you for taking the time to show the figures so comprehensively. It is very useful to have those guidelines and much appreciated.
I would counter that 2 years ago we were had by the short and curlies. Now, not so much. It's much more of a buyers market. There are several options available to us 'Purpleplace' folk alone for progression from turboprop to jet. BA/Jet2/BACF/Norwegian have all taken a lot of people recently, even Emirates have lowered their application requirements to include turboprops.
As oceanhawk rightly said, we sadly can't expect to retire on the terms of someone retiring from TOM now - my concern is that if we accept these kinds of deals for the 'longer term' carrot being dangled, we then set a precedent for further and further erosion. Especially at a time when the ball seems to be much more in our collective court than it has been for some time. The prevalent thinking in (most) companies unfortunately seems to be to offer the minimum deal they feel they can get away with. If we accept, it endorses it and the slide continues.
I don't mean to steer this entire thread towards the NTR turboprop side of things, but thought it was a discussion worth having.