Originally Posted by
Curtain rod
And by the way, yes it does matter what fleet you are on. It goes something like this:
777 = work 12-14 days/month (8-10 nights away from home bed), 6 of those 12 not actually doing any flying, in flight for half of the 6 days but sleeping/resting in flight for half of that time (mostly 4 pilots per long haul/half the work), most short haul used for training flights/line checks, always receiving full monthly pay or more, with the slightest additional flying adding up very fast to a lot of extra overtime pay. Usually away from home for max 3 nights in a row (vast majority of long hauls) though a few are 4 nights, with an endless variety of pleasant international cities to enjoy during the layovers, from Zurich to New York, Johannesburg to Amsterdam, Rome to Vancouver (etc.).
747 = work 18-20 days/month (away from home bed, 3/4 of patterns 5-10 days away at a time, 1/4 2-3 days), with half to 2/3 of the month waiting (in often sub-par airport/industrial park hotels) for no pay/credit hours, usually getting maximum 90% of your monthly pay and very rarely 100% or any overtime (both reduce provident fund), despite being away from home 50-80% more than the vast majority of 777 pilots, mostly 2-pilot flights (no rest) with 1-2 sectors mostly through the night, and never more than 1/3 rest in the 9.5-12 hour trans-Pacific flights even though often longer than 777 flights with 1/2 the rest, with a roster that is always in flux and zero compensation for changes/extra days away from home/cancellation of guaranteed days off or leave due to frequent changes and late returns home (no concern whatsover for your family's plans/holidays/weddings/birthdays/events/flight tickets/etc. that you will miss due to the 100% free option, at the company's discretion, of making you work indefinitely once you are on a trip away from home). Also, the vast majority of the company doesn't know and doesn't care that you exist, and those that do will purposefully treat you as a second-class employee who does not deserve any respect. 75-80% layovers are too short to enjoy much in any city, other than a meal near the hotel, with up to 50% of layover time spent in Anchorage (effectively on free reserve to cover the frequent schedule changes).
Airbus (A330/340/350) = Mostly 20-22 days/month of work (but will slowly improve as A350 growth slowly occurs), vast majority 1-2 night away from home at a time, with half that waiting (too often in sub-par airport/industrial park hotels) for no pay/credit hours/ usually getting maximum 90% of your monthly pay and very rarely 100% or any overtime (both reduce provident fund), despite working 80-90% more days than the vast majority of 777 pilots, mostly 2-pilot flights (no rest) with 1-2 sectors half all the way through the night but often alternating with days/nights at work, exacerbating the fatigue and health issues, many 5 to 10 hour red-eye flights with just a short break in a J-class seat, and very few long haul flights with same in-flight rest as 777. Majority of layovers are minimum or near-minimum rest periods with little to no time to do anything outside the hotel.
Well, not the whole story, but it's something like that.
And this is why the DEFO hiring is onto the 330 and 747 and not onto the 777: to avoid a chaotic revolution by those already trapped on lousy rosters/lifestyles/pay/conditions with no way out.