BA Pay Increments

[Scottie]

Was looking on the BALPA website at the BA Terms and Conditions.

It says that a year 5 shorthaul FO will be earning £63,000 a year. What would a year 1 FO earn?

Roughly what are the increments per year on the basic salary for FO and Captains?

[The Greaser]

Year 1 FO 42841 (Plus allowances of course)
Increments Long Haul 2301, Short Haul 1666


Year 5 Captain earns 66000 basic (Short Haul)

Hope this helps.

[expedite_climb]

When you get promoted to go captain you go 'sideways'.

So a year 5 FO becoming a skipper (you'd be lucky!) would straight away be a Pay point 5 skipper.......

[Cuban_8]

Scottie,

The figure you quoted sounds about right. As Greaser stated, year one basic is £42841 ish. Adding all allowances, I reckon you’re in the ballpark of £55k. After 5 yearly increments of ~£1650....... you do the math.

The promotion system e_c describes means that, if you swap seats after 12 years (optimistic some will say!), your basic will be ~£81.5k, so around £93k ish all told.

Hope this helps,

Cuban_8

[Scottie]

Thanks for the info chaps. Was just doing a very rough back of fag packet calculation about how much money I would lose over my remaining career by staying in the orange dream.

Assuming I changed seats in BA after 12 years (optimistic points noted) I'd gain £0.5m over my orange salary over the remaining years of my career.

As money orientated as I am :} the reduction in my lifestyle i.e. commuting, jet lag and time away from home over the next 30 years would do me & my marriage in! So the £0.5m gained would know doubt be whipped out my greedy paws by the courts ;)

So I'll stay in the orange fold :{ :{ :{ :ouch:

[Tandemrotor]

So long as working for the "orange fold" doesn't do your head in rather than spending a few years (at least) lounging on tropical beaches between flights!

You'd be daft to base your life around purely financial assessments.

[Scottie]

Tandemrotor, each to their own!

For me the financial assessment is about the only attraction of working for BA.

Lounging on a beach whilst I have a wife and hopefully a few kids back in the UK isn't my idea of family life, neither is spending night after night in hotels. I'm not willing to move from the regions down to LHR.

BA can't beat my lifestyle that easyJet offers me so the only thing they can compete on is cash & pensions.

Since the final salary scheme has disappeared and the salary differential is not that great BA is not for me as my money goes further up North. However I asked the original question just to make sure!

Everbody's situation will be different. If I was single it would be a different story completely :E

[maxy101]

Scottie If only more pilot applicants thought like you! BA would be forced to up the T & C's to encourage people to work for them.

[Airbrake]

Scottie. I did the sums too, and it wasn't that much for me. You also have to remember that you only catch up and over take in the later years of your career.

[Tandemrotor]

Scottie

If as you say, "For me the financial assessment is about the only attraction of working for BA."

Then I'm sure you are correct, BA is probably not for you, and you aren't for BA.

If for some reason you don't want to take your wife and (hopefully) kids with you on trips to the free hotels, in tropical destinations, you don't have to. Personally, I have enjoyed it many times! (what's staff travel like in easy?)

For me personally, 35 years of going to the same destinations, in the same aircraft would probably get a little wearing. However, as you say:

Each to their own. Swings and roundabouts if you like.

But if you only look at the salary that BA is currently offering (probably still market leading!), my humble opinion is you are taking a very narrow view of what is on offer, that's all.

BTW: Just curious. When you did your career earnings comparison, what retirement age did you use for BA and Easy?

[Scottie]

If I were to move down to the SE of England then I'd grab BA with both hands were I to be offered it as I still think it is the airline to be in.

However, living up North as I do the cash doesn't make up for the inconvenience of commuting.

Having worked for a previous airline with star alliance staff travel I'd have to say it's a nice perk but not the best thing in the world.
Staff travel is rubbish in in my current employer but I didn't join them for that. Any time I go across the pond I go Continental from my local airport, when I go into Europe I go with a LoCo again from my local airport! When I book a holiday I like a confirmed seat. Having once been number 54 in the standby queue at LAX to go to Auckland the stress is too much ;)

35 years in the same aircraft to the same routes, come on! Aircraft fleets change over time and so do the routes! Ok I don't have the choice on offer that a BA pilot has but the lifestyle outside of work to me is better. I'm home almost every night and I know my days off a year in advance.

But if you only look at the salary that BA is currently offering (probably still market leading!), my humble opinion is you are taking a very narrow view of what is on offer, that's all.

No doubt about it, the salary is market leading. For me these are the pros and cons :\

Pros
Job Security
Variety
Salary
Roster - stability once written
Leave - amount

Cons
Commute
Time spent away
Time to command
Roster - control of, junior seniority
Seniority, being in early thirties with current time to command
Relocation

The commute kills it for me which is why I was looking at salaries to make up for it....

I'm not knocking BA as I think it's a great company. In fact when I can I prefer to travel with BA as I think you've got a great product which knocks the spots off anything the LoCo's do on shorthaul and is on a par with VS on long haul. All I'm saying is that for me the package isn't worth moving for. Just wanted the payscales to make sure I had the full picture!:}

[maxy101]

Scottie I think you've got your priorities right. BA is a great place to be if you joined x yrs ago. (15 in my case) A LH Command and serious money looming on the horizon. A decent NAPS pension (if it holds together). First Class seats on Staff Travel (when you can get on). All good stuff. But if I was in your position earning 70K a yr plus flying from my regional airport , home every night, in a secure airline, I'd probably stay put too....

[Tandemrotor]

Yep

On balance, I think I would agree. BA certainly isn't what it used to be. It certainly ain't the obvious first choice it possibly was!

[16 blades]

Just out of interest, Scottie (since you seem quite level headed!) can you give us a rundown of your current scene at Easy? I presume you're LHS - what's your average monthly pay, how long are newhires waiting for command nowadays, and how's the 5-2-5-4 working out? Cheers.

16B

[Scottie]

Not LHS yet but working towards it :}

Take home for a Captain is about £4200 and for an SFO is about £3100 (old scale non TRSS before pension contribution).

From joining I believe you need a year in the RHS to be considered then it'll take anything up to a year to get on a course. Promotion has been rather slow for the last year so many people are in the pool having achieved the 3,000 factored hours. UK commands are slowing down to but there are rumoured to be a lot of people leaving for BA and VS (can't blame them).

5/2/5/4 works out great. Very often you'll have a couple of standby's thrown into the pattern and lately not been called for any of them so in the 16 day block you can get 8 on and 8 off! However I'm in the regions and every base is different so that may not be the full picture, just as I see it.

Not the best company in the UK but neither is it the worst!

[Airbrake]

An important addition to the above is the "Loyalty Bonus" You get 5% of Basic after 2 yrs,10% after 5yrs and 15% after 10yrs. Only Captains get this unless the FO has "grandfather" rights.
Whilst called the Loyatly Bonus it makes up for the fact that there are no annual increments at Easy and is paid as a lump sum on each anniversary.