Most of the latest questions have been answered in this history of this thread so take a little time to read it.
the question about an extra £8k in allowances over summer, maybe maximum BEFORE tax.
Bases - those existing pilots with a preference to be at another base get first choice, called standing bid, once those are satisfied any holes left is where new pilots go (well, that's what the agreements say, depends if management are ignoring them or not that week).
Why are Thomson charging for an OCC, great question, simple answer is to save money and they think they will still get the required numbers (we shall see).
That 7K and forced PPY50 for 5 years scheme started 3-4 years ago.
The first lot of recruited PPY50 guys were made permanent full time within 6 months (2013 joiners). The reason for that was because very few permenant pilots wanted to go to Canada and the company gets paid well to send pilots to Canada, so they wanted to extend the offer to PPY50 pilots, the union said if you want them working full time in Canada you make them all full time (all pilots senior to the most junior pilot going), so that is what happened, the first lot of PPY50 pilots became permanent pilots - it is after all what the agreements say. So they told all told their mates how great it was and that is the word on the street.
year 2-3 - their mates all apply for PPY50 and £7k deduction on the expectation of the same happening again, it didn't for some reason the union didn't insist that any pilot senior to the most junior going to Canada be made full time as per the agreement - don't ask me why not, I don't understand why not. As a result these guys have not been made permanent - BA opens recruitment guess who is leaving Thomson.... (
Year 3-4 - Present Day - it is known that the company will do all it can not to make PPY50 guys permanent and its clear that if you go to Canada you don't get made permanent now (??) well you do for that winter so the company can make its handsome money of PPY50 guys being out there, and new PPY pilots get 18.7% extra pay for doing 25% more work (think about that for a minute !!) [their contract is 81.3% pay for 75% work, they upgrade to 100% pay for 100% work] They also get the detachment extras.
Because of the above sequence of events coupled with reduced pension to new joiners now too, the number of rated applicants dropped significantly, I imagine they expect even less applicants this year hence they are forced to open up to NTR, who knows what's next if that is unsuccessful - maybe Thomson will be forced to consider its offering to new pilots to pay them what they're actually worth rather than robbing them.
The time to command is significant if doing the long term maths, you have an FO sat on the FO max paypoint £69k for 10 years, no further increments and then at eventual command they move to paypoint 1 of the captains pay scale (it is now time in rank that determines captains pay, not time in company as per the old pay scales). That is why a lot of the existing FO's in the company on the old payscales are reluctant to move, they will move across to captains pay scale based on time in company (old pay scales), so that 15 years to command figure, I cant see dropping any time soon.
if I had my time again now what would I do, well to be honest I would want to get on a jet, but not in a company that offers below competitive terms and certainly not one with 15 years sat on mediocre pay as an FO with a bunch of deductions.
I would be more inclined to join a company that has mediocre pay and a much shorter time to command (as it goes I don't think any current long serving FO's thought it would be that long but the merger of FCA and BY made it so) - who knows what one aviation is about to do (see previous posts for what that is), once you have that time in the left seat the world is your oyster and with the number of companies increasing their DEC options I think it is only a matter of a few years till the value you can print on those tickets increases significantly coupled with the retirement bulge across the industry.
All personal opinion of course, others will likely disagree.
Good luck
Last edited by youthinkso; 19th Aug 2015 at 12:39.