BA or Virgin? Which is better?

[Yeovil]

I agree wholeheartedly with Spam man above.

Carnage matey - "hit the nail on the head" too. How can Mike Street sleep at night when the airline provides such a dreadful level of service?

I predict that BA won't exist in its present form in five years.
Any F/O joining now needs to have his eyes wide open. he will never get a command here - since it's probable that Easyjet will dominate the LGW market and BA will slowly shrink back to be a LH operation.

[JONSV]

Only 4 years done in BA, 30 (or 35) left to go.

There is no way in hell that I will be able to work those thirty years at the current rate. I will HAVE to go part time, otherwise it WILL kill me. The reasons have been given by many others.

I'm saying this in my mid-twenties, and I am absolutely serious.

Something not yet mentioned anywhere is the number of pilots taking Open University courses. Maybe not going to other airlines, but changing career completely.

WANABEES LISTEN CAREFULLY: go to a good university and get a good degree in something useful.

I've always wanted to be a pilot, never anything else. To have realised my life time ambition has made myself, my friends and family so proud.

To feel how I do about my job, my company and my future now truly breaks my heart. As dramatic as it sounds, I can only compare the feeling with one of betrayal.

[P1 Forever]

Hi JONSV,

Surely it can't be that bad. Listen lets swap jobs for a month (I wish) and we will see who's better off. I would love to be in your shoes right now and so would many others. I suppose that by your age, with respect, that you haven't had any of the low paid, dirty, long houred , degrading jobs that I and many others out there have had. You have a great future, long haul command, well above average salary, ok you work hard and it's long hours waking up at 4:00am but if you don't want it give me the job.

Oh, and this talk that I will have to work every weekend, don't get me wrong I love my weekends, but who cares if I have to work them, I will do it gladly. Another thing is that if I join on the 777 I will have to do the east coast US such as New York, Atlanta, Orlando......poor me.....come on!!

I don't have rose tinted glasses either - I am just living in the real world.

Flying for a living is not a job - it's a way of life

Cheers!!

[snooky]

P1, it's your choice. You can either listen to what you're being told or ignore it, but if you choose to ignore it you'll find yourself stuck like many of us now are.
I can promise you that it will take a relatively short time for the novelty to wear off.
Put the same amount of effort into any other career and I think you''ll end up better off.
Being very badly managed in an industry where it's almost impossible to change employer once some seniority is accrued and facing endless exhaustion being worked to legal limits is no life.
Endless East coast may sound good to an outsider, but in reality it is purgatory.
What other job has at least 5 potentially career ending checks a year.
Think very hard before entering the trap!
You may be right that flying is a way of life, but it's increasingly difficult to have any other life alongside it.

[scroggs]

P1, the important thing to bear in mind is that, at some point in the future even if not now, you will want the occasional weekend off, and you will want some guaranteed time off with your wife and kids, and you will want some indication (beyond salary) that you are a valued member of the organisation you belong to, and that your welfare is of some importance to them. It seems that, at the moment, BA is not fulfilling the expectations of many of its pilots. I don't know if that's likely to be a permanent state of affairs - in fact, I doubt it - but please respect the genuinely-held feelings of those who actually do the job you're so desperate to get into.

At the moment, the Virgin pilot group seems to be faring somewhat better than their colleagues at BA - but it wasn't always like that, and there's no reason to suppose it always will be!

[Human Factor]

Another thing is that if I join on the 777 I will have to do the east coast US such as New York, Atlanta, Orlando......poor me.....come on!!

You do that month in month out with very few days off, none of them at weekends, in between, your body clock will shift about 3 hours westwards and you will find yourself completely drained on your (minimum) days off. Try it. I give you six months before you feel the same way. Having said that, if enough of you join on the 777, none of us will have to work quite as hard with any luck.

[maxy101]

Right On!! If we can get more of these suckers to join, it'll push the rest of us up the list and into a semi decent lifestyle!

[expedite_climb]

You boys have obviously never / have forgotten what is like to work for a charter outfit in the summer...... long european 2 sector night flights are more tiring than the atlantic IMHO, followed by minimum days off into stupidly early flights.

[maxy101]

Problem is EC...They are doing it 12 months a year, not 6 months during the Summer and then recovering over the Winter season. There is a strong feeling amongst certain people in the know ,that something "nasty" is going to happen, as the holes in the cheese are starting to align. Ironically, the troops seem to know, but few people with the power to change things are listening.

[JONSV]

P1,

I hear what you're saying, but I don't really think you understand what I mean.

Your post is full of wistful wishes of a glamourous lifestyle and foreign travel. My point is; thats exactly what I thought it would be, and I was nowhere near the reality.

You said

Flying for a living is not a job - it's a way of life

That's wrong. It's a JOB that TAKES OVER your life.

Some of your points are exactly right, it's a good job compared to some, and well paid. But it's a job nonetheless. It's a tiring one, a thankless one, an unhealthy one, a VERY insecure one, a very stressful one and sometimes a destructive one.

I have done some crappy jobs, albeit as a student, and I have many friends who do crap jobs for £11k a year. I count myself lucky in that sense, but I do not consider myself to be lucky just because I'm a pilot.

Six years ago I was that dreamer who sat and read things like I've just written, green with envy, sick with the craving for the high life, and in complete denial that what I saw could possibly be the truth. I think a lot of people know where I'm coming from.

expedite_climb

I have done long european night flights, ones where you sit on the ground for 2 hrs before going back. I personally find going from lates with one day off then 5 pre-7am checkins in a row which total 12 sectors (4 sectors in $hite wx checking in at 0500 local, madness) and 40 duty hours considerably more tiring.

And thats all year round.

[P1 Forever]

Hi JONSV,

I am sorry if I went a little too far in my last post. As a student pilot I have no inside knowledge however, as you are a chap around my age, I just thought it was a real shame that you felt this way about your career and company. I just hope I don't feel the same way in 10 years from now.

Therefore, what changes would you guys make in order for it to become a pleasure again - less hours, home more often perhaps?

I do hope your T&C's improve in the near future.

Best of luck.

P1

[Pelican]

A lot had been said about the fact that you won't see a weekend off when joining BA. How is that situation at Virgin for newcomers?

Can they expect to be working most weekends as well, or is all of that alleviated a bit by the bidding system they have? Is one of the fleets worse for weekends than the other, or is it a pretty uniform thing?

[scroggs]

There is no difference between the fleets. As we do not use a bidline system, it is impossible for anyone, no matter how senior, to bid for every weekend off. There are strict limits as to how many trips or days off you can bid for, and the maxima reduce if you have leave in that month. We also use a rotating bid group system, with a balance of seniority in each of three bid groups. That way, even the most junior pilot has a good chance of getting some preferred days off or trips one month in three.

With the nature of the trips flown, and the minimum time between flights, it is possible to get into an all-weekends or all-weekdays roster, as the trip cycle is approximately 6 or 7 days. Therefore tactical bidding can be used to break the cycle and get some weekends off.

The system works pretty well (though we've been having some trouble getting A340 rosters out on time recently - hopefully now sorted), and you don't hear too many complaints on the line.

[Pelican]

Thanks a lot Scroggs (as always a very informative response). Cheers.

[The Big Easy]

Scroggs,

The rumour is that virgin are still significantly under-crewed and there is a problem brewing when new routes start. How many trips/hours are you flying per month? Are virgin still recruiting for both fleets or just the Airbus?

TBE.

[easyprison]

Sick;

"GSS's 744 F/Os are screaming to escape their abuse and exit to Virgin"

Perhaps on a new thread you could expand on that statement?

Interested to hear..............

[maxy101]

Or maybe the rumour that certain BA types seconded to GSS will do their 500 hrs P1 before sliding over to CAL, Emirates, etc

[wreckless]

Has the Virgin pay offer lived up to expectations, or has it fallen short of the figures given when Virgin pilots voted for it?

[maxy101]

Sick...I wouldn't be surprised if they took DEP's straight on the -400. Rumour has it that BA are having problems getting the quality it wants (on the cheap, of course) I can see that they would have to offer some incentive to join. IMHO, you don't really want to start flying in BA in shorthaul at the age of 38 or so. The earlies will kill you.

[scroggs]

Virgin has recruited for the 744 this year, but there aren't likely to be many courses required over the next couple of years unless the company forces people to move from the 744 to the 340 - which is bound to happen as commands come up. So, there will be some need for new 744 drivers but not a great deal. That said, the supply of rated Airbus pilots is not endless and, as was the case when I joined, it's more than likely that the company will retrain people they like.

As for the pay deal, wreckless, it has fully lived up to its promises. And I'm still contracted to only 750 hours a year.