Staff Travel - if you are travelling without kids and/or travelling off peak, the ST system can work quite well. Most ST tickets are confirmed seats, and some are standby (but convert to confirmed if the system thinks that the flight if sufficiently undersold). School holidays its a waste of time usually. You can add three other names to your Staff Travel account plus kids. You can change the names up to 20 times in year. We have no agreements with other airlines.
Bases - AMS has been a crew base for quite a while and is expanding I believe. Not sure how many aircraft they have, maybe 7? PMI opened as a seasonal crew base this year for the summer months. FO's tend to go back to LGW for the winter. I can't see a base in Scandinavia any time soon. We have lots of other bases all over Europe.
A321 - I think the 321's are coming to operate services from slot restricted airports like LGW/ORY?
Crew meals - Yes we are fed. Its depends on the sector length and time of day you start as to what you get. (i.e. LON-AMS-LON - a hot breakfast / LON - DLM - LON - two hot meals and sandwiches and chocolate/fruit). Also free tea/coffee and bottles water. We aren't Ryanair, we have a union(s).
LIDO -yes LIDO used on Toughpads. I think PMI base trialled iPAD's in the summer?
Layovers - There are very few layovers. LGW and MXP have a few I think? You will also night stop away if you work at another base. (my last one was about 4 months ago).
Good luck.....