Career Advice Needed
 

Hello Everyone

Currently an FO who has been at EZY for a couple of months. Quick background about me, 36 years old , with a partner and currently no kids, happy to fly either long or short haul.
I know that time is not on my side and i want to make the most out of my career with the end goal of becoming captain. Most FOs that i know are looking to move to BA .
Given my circumstances is it best to stay put and build my career at my current airline, or move over to BA ?

Appreciate any help and advice.

Thank you

There are lots of questions you need to ask yourself. Where are you in 5 years? Kids? Can your partner move?

For your career. Firstly, is your licence allowing you the move? Do you have an MPL or an ATPL. Have a look at what you need to do to free the MPL, or how many hours left to unfreeze the ATPL?

Next, do you really want to move to BA? Their new contracts are getting worse. The company swap means a drop in seniority, you'll be bidding on the !!!! sectors with the kids. Have you considered other airlines like Virgin?

Lastly, if the goal is captain, then the quickest way is where you are. Stick at ezy, do the command upgrade, training captain, TRI, potentially TRE too. You'll get better bids and pay ramps up to keep people in senior roles.

As Hats On has said, it depends what lifestyle you want and how long you are willling to spend to get to it. Most people in Low Cost operators see themselves better off in the Legacy airlines such as BA and Virgin. That used to be the case but sadly it's not anymore. Pay and conditions are not that different and where a bidding system exists you will always find yourself worse off in the larger companies for many years to come.

Having worked both long haul and short haul I can assure you that both get to you in the end. Short haul leaves you feeling like you've dug the garden on a daily basis whilst long haul simulates military style sleep depravation. Both culminate in the same level of long term fatigue that sees you hit a tree on the way home. The only difference is that with long haul you go fly twice a week whilst short haul you fly twice a day (or more).

You state that you want a command. In that case stay where you are. You agree that your age is higher than the standard demographic so in the larger airlines you'll be unlikely to see the left seat in less than ten years, probably more. However, once you move seats it becomes nearly impossible to justify moving to another airline. Direct entry or start up opportunities are rare so you would have to have a strong reason to start over again with another operator.

Depends what you really want but in your position, I would at least try for a big legacy airline to experience different or more varied flying.

You might not get in, but you have nothing to lose by trying, and trust me, flying short-haul in Europe will start to get tedious after 15 years - let alone 29 years - especially with the ever increasing rules and procedures; tighter profit margins and fuel policies being taken out of Commander's hands.

Flying is not as much fun any more, but with a big legacy airline, you can at least move into different areas, e.g, try long-haul. (Not brilliant either any more, but at least you get to see some of the World).

If you don't get in, then you can fall back on trying to get a Command where you are.

If you do try for BA, then practice practice - and then practice some more ! They give you 30 maths Q's in 12 mins, and a similar extremely time-limited verbal reasoning test.

Good luck :ok:

As a part-time modular student a couple of years younger than the OP, it's a situation I've thought about quite a bit. Looking from the outside in easyJet seems to be one of the better gigs available, it's a shame they rarely take modular folk.

Staying at easyJet you could probably go on permanent earlies/lates (as a shift worker it's a massive game-changer for the better to stay on the same shift), live 10 minutes from a regional base, be home most nights and when you get a command put loads into the pension due to the lower cost of living at a regional base. IIRC, easyJet have a 2-year secondment option with Virgin Atlantic for a long-haul "try before you buy". From what I understand VS use rotating bid groups for rostering, so the seniority gradient is a bit less steep than BA but there's a theme of VS Airbus crews being worked very hard.

Going to BA, you'll have a strict seniority roster and probably won't get a particularly good roster as a long-haul captain unless there's a mass exodus of more senior folk from the UK. It's not like you'll be able to pick a date 6 months in advance and know if you're going to get it off, especially on long-haul. There's the option of Euroflyer to build seniority before heading to Mainline but you'll take a big pay/cost of living hit in the short-medium term. One thing to bear in mind with long-haul is that you probably won't do much flying, I remember being at an assessment for the old VS MPL programme and an SFO from the airline said that before a trip the captain would ask "does anyone need a landing?" due to the 28-day recency requirement.

If you can get an EASA licence, Aer Lingus might be an option (5:3 short-haul and random roster long-haul) but there is allegedly quite a lot of internal politics which are hard to dodge though very good T&Cs.

For people like us, the dream of course would be for a tweak in the law to require seniority to be done by age rather than join date, much fairer for various reasons in my opinion but that's an entirely different debate.

For clarification, I don't believe that candidates are really expected to complete all the questions in the alloted time. The time factor is there to apply some direct pressure, and the aim of the exercise is to see how many you can get done correctly within the limited time. It is no good attempting all the questions, and getting nil to very few correct, as this might be interpreted as a potential to panic on an aircraft, which could lead to, for example, messing up an emergency diagnosis and accompanying checklists

Yes, the test does need you to work quickly, but accuracy is also very important. It is many, many years since I undertook BA's tests, and I have a vague recollection I got through about 25 of the maths questions in the alloted time, with reasonable confidence I had answered correctly. I found the verbal reasoning test to be a bit easier. From research I was aware that the time-limited maths and verbal reasoning would be part of the testing regime, and I resolved to go about them exactly as I have described. Whatever I scored, it was all good enough to get me through to a sim check, and the offer of a longhaul job.