Well, actually I beg to disagree, I think overall it is a pretty good deal for the next cadre of pilots and if given my time again would rather be on this new system than the one currently in force. If your plan was to depart as soon as your RoS was up, then you will be around £40k worse off. However with the big jump in flying pay increments, if you plan to stick around until 12 years post OCU (i.e. until just before you would have got Enhanced Rate RRP) then you are about £23k better off just on flying pay alone. You'll also have done your RoS for your FRI, so chuck another £70k on top of that too. You're now probably only about 6 years from the carrot of your IPP. Overall I will be surprised if that doesn't have a positive effect on retention.
Personally, as someone on enhanced rate already I don't get cock-all extra on 1 Apr, but I'm sticking around for the pension and they obviously know it. From a selfish point of view, that sucks, but from a retention point of view, I think they've done an ok job given the constraints.