on long haul you need the 3-4 days that you get more to recover from the jet leg and the 18h duty.
And to make it straight, pay is not great.....its ****. I know there are a few guys who joined Aerologic because they can say "I am flying a 777".
If you just go there because auf the a/c, then you should think again.
Exactly, the airline is now full of kids with 200 hours from some flight school in Germany, willing to work for peanuts.
I know of an ex-colleague who went there about 5-6 years ago with quite a few thousand hours of experience and back then he made about €2500 after taxes + a few hundred Euros in per diem. I also looked at some of his duty plans and they are killing IMO. If I remember correctly three man crew HKG-ALA-LEJ or LEJ-ORD-LAX and stuff like that.
The area around Leipzig is relatively cheap but also totally boring, and if you think about moving to Berlin (about 1,5 - 2 hours to the airport by car depending on traffic and where you live in Berlin) with AL's pay you can barely afford to live in a reasonably nice area + pay for a car + pay for a crash pad in the LEJ area.
Perhaps the pay and schedules have improved by now, but all in all I was not terribly impressed, especially for Western Europe and flying brand new 777's.
Probably was considered a good stepping stone by many for an eventual jump to the ME carriers - but now those ME carriers look increasingly awful in terms of QOL and flying fatigue. Now Ryan and Easy look tame when compared to EK in terms of flying fatigue.
I think it was more the other way around, initially lot's of type rated guys joined from one of the big ME3, desperate to escape the desert at just about any price.