Less days off than I would have imagined. Are 15 or more days off possible or simply non-existant?
Yikes........even at BA, even in Longhaul we're expected to come to work every now and then
. To be fair some of this depends on whether you regard a late departure from LHR (e.g. to SIN,) as a day off, and also if you'd regard an oh dark thirty arrival at LHR as an effective day off (e.g. arrivals from LOS, NBO, SIN). If you are prepared to think that way you'll get 15 days "off" on a lot of lines. OTOH as a full timer it's very hard if not impossible to get 15
entire days off unless you've got leave or a Duty Free Week already embedded in the month (Now no doubt somebody will look at rosters and prove me wrong but I'm betting 15 complete non leave days clear of duty on a final final roster is rare).....
History lesson: Once upon a time, a time that ended a couple of years back, you could build up a "bank" of hours by working over the CAP for several months and then trade in those hours by bidding for a below CAP line ( the lower limit used to be CAP minus 15 hours)... so if you worked at it you could occasionally bid to get a "light" line with perhaps 15 days off in a month, and sit back safe in the knowledge the roster was safe ('ish). Nowadays the company are still happy for you to build a bank ( no..sh...sherlock), but if you try to discharge it and as a result get a big juicy gap on your line the company will probably find a trip to drop into it (it's called Final Assign/Roster Assign). EASA rules have made that a tad more difficult but BA have ways of making it work,
FWIW this is the exactly the sort of reason to beware of some of the ex-BA guys who go around saying how great
Bidline
is:
" Wonderful system dear chap..bid high in winter my boy, bid low in summer...lots of fixed days off... now must go, need a new sail for the yacht
...."
It's not bad, but it has changed radically - and who knows what's around the corner????