Busbo
1. A lot of effort has gone into reducing the variable element in basic pay - some of the variability in the amounts being posted might be explained by people picking up extra work as part of the "open time" (overtime) process.
2. Domestic standby return fares can now be even more expensive than the figure you mentioned..check your PMs. Car parking arrangements seem generally to be down to individual airports.
3. Yep, if LHR based and doing any training at LHR ( initial, recurrent or conversion) you pay for your food and accommodation. Somebody more recent will hopefully give you a handle on the timescale for an intial course.
4. There's a points system for leave to stop the senior guys hogging the popular slots. That means some years you'll get family friendly leave, sometimes you won't.
5 and 6. ..... You might want to ask those questions again in about a month when we start seeing for the first time our EASA compliant LH rosters.
In the meantime I'll say that historically blind lines have always been a bit of pot luck, with the odd good and a few iffy trips, but they could be massaged to be more friendly in terms of blocks of days off by a bit of trip swopping (e.g to generate a back to back to get specific days off). However it seems under EASA compliant FTLs things are going to be much more restrictive. As it stands we do know that back to backs at base will be almost impossible (unless BA organises/funds them), that in many circumstances you'll need more time off at base post trip than currently is the case, and that certain combinations of trips will be very problematic. We'll start getting a few clues as to the shape of things to come when the Feb intial bid process starts just before Christmas. We won't see the new blindlines until well into January.
Ultimately not sure if there's much "meat" on that post but hope it helps a little bit.
Last edited by wiggy; 15th Dec 2015 at 11:02.