British Airways Direct Entry Pilot

[Basicsteve]

Originally Posted by AIMINGHIGH123

Regarding leave you can also bolt DFW to leave as well if it’s available. Friends of mine have taken unpaid leave after a block of leave before as well if getting away from it all is your thing.

Regarding JSS and rostering. I am only a year in but the last 3 months on SH fleet seems to have changed a lot. I’m getting at least 3 weekend days off a month and sometimes both Sat/Sunday if I get the reserve. With SH if you are a bit flexible swapping trips is a breeze at present. Getting head around bidding is hard work, once you found what works for you it’s much easier. Yes I often get a few trips I don’t want. Go into EOT or keep an eye out and swap if something drops in that I like.

Mates on triple are working so hard. Seen 5 trips a month sometimes. JFK x4 and a Lagos. Hard work especially landing 7am into LHR.
Definitely looking at all the rosters the A380 looks like the easiest fleet to me. Not much difference between most junior and senior on the fleet. Swapping within LH seems to be a lot harder from what my mates say but then they don’t have the faf of LHR which can completely fall over when a bit of weather hits the UK.

As others have said BA kind of ripped up the rule book during COVID. People that got 787, 350 Feb 2020 kept their jobs. I know guys who took 777 as waiting for a 787 course meant another month before you start and “seniority is everything at BA” got dumped by BA. They are back of course but it seems everyone is looking over their shoulders now and positioning themselves just incase.

The 777 is very hard work ! Made me laugh when guys on SH would think that life would be so much easier when the promised land of LH presents itself , then they find they are doing 5 trips per month for the next xx amount of years.
380 is a nice fleet that’s for sure , but BA would screw you in a heartbeat if the need arises

[Lordflasheart]

Swedish Massage

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AimingHigh ...

Regarding JSS and rostering. I am only a year in but the last 3 months on SH fleet seems to have changed a lot. I’m getting at least 3 weekend days off

That's probably because you're now being optimised by these nice VeeOne folks in Stockholm ...

https://veeone.se/news/

Working across all 5 aircraft types in the British Airways fleet, VeeOne will deliver Optimised crew rosters via a team of experienced Jeppeson crew planners and rule engineers. Conrad Heald, British Airways Flight Crew Resource Delivery Manager said ...

LFH
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[Raph737]

Originally Posted by Lordflasheart

...
AimingHigh ...



That's probably because you're now being optimised by these nice VeeOne folks in Stockholm ...

https://veeone.se/news/



LFH
...

Is that in effect already? How does it differ from JSS if you don’t mind me asking?

[blimey]

Plastic787, how big a glass of water did you need to swallow that BALPA line?

[GS-Alpha]

777 has some new inhibitors which appear to limit the number of 2 crew trips to 3 a month. I think that will probably help improve junior rosters, but time will tell.

[White Van Driver]

Originally Posted by GS-Alpha

777 has some new inhibitors which appear to limit the number of 2 crew trips to 3 a month. I think that will probably help improve junior rosters, but time will tell.

Is this inhibitor a new thing? I've been aware of that inhibitor for a good couple of years and I've certainly never been rostered >3 full 2crew trips in a month (for reference ive never been better than of 90% seniority on the fleet). You can see some rosters with more than 3xjfks but i expect you'd find there's been a swap involved rather than jss doing it.

I'm no expert so could be wrong here, GS-A, genuine question.

I'm never far off on my average 3x 3day and 2x 4day trips in a full month as a junior P777. Someone mentioned 4xJKF & a lagos in a month... that wouldn't even make CAP (monthly hours target) as hideous as it sounds.

I had a look at the a380 rosters though, and they are a full trip less than mine in nearly all cases. Longer flights so they get the hours quicker. At the moment they only have 6 destinations though so variety is much less.

For potential joiners onto LH I'd say take what they offer, there are positives to see on all fleets, then after your freeze go where suits you most.

[Plastic787]

Originally Posted by blimey

Plastic787, how big a glass of water did you need to swallow that BALPA line?

which line would that be exactly? There’s no line to be swallowed it’s a matter of simple fact, which some would appear incapable of grasping.

[wtsmg]

Originally Posted by Potatos_69

Ancilliary benefits are definitely hard to beat. Staff travel is fabulous. Pension is great! If you can master JSS, or just be happy to be flexible with work your rostering can be great (much harder though as a junior with kids wanting weekends off your only option for some guaranteed time will be part time)

Does JSS allow you (to try, haha) to bid for or avoid lates/earlies? If so, is that generally achievable on LH, in the sense of bidding to avoid a check-in time before XX:XX? Is commuting into LHR on the shuttle flights fairly straightforward and the done thing for LH crew? Many thanks.

[GS-Alpha]

Originally Posted by Plastic787

which line would that be exactly? There’s no line to be swallowed it’s a matter of simple fact, which some would appear incapable of grasping.

I think it can be argued that if BA could be convinced to take it on the chin for X number of pilots, simply because they were on efficient fleets, then they could surely have been convinced to save that many across the board if no efficient fleet had been identified. Therefore some people were made redundant who had the seniority not to be, had the former scenario not been an option.

I personally believe BA would be in a far stronger financial position right now, had they not panicked so much, and kept everyone employed and retained all aircraft, but they had to make a decision and we are where we are.

[GS-Alpha]

Originally Posted by wtsmg

Does JSS allow you (to try, haha) to bid for or avoid lates/earlies? If so, is that generally achievable on LH, in the sense of bidding to avoid a check-in time before XX:XX? Is commuting into LHR on the shuttle flights fairly straightforward and the done thing for LH crew? Many thanks.

JSS tries to build you a complete roster and you can certainly have a go at completely blocking work you don’t want to do. But if you don’t get a complete roster with the trips remaining, you enter a phase called fallback which incrementally changes the conditions of your bid. As a junior, if you’re asking for stuff that isn’t left by the time it gets to you, you’ll enter fallback and then control over what you asked for flies out the window.

The inhibitors are powerful though, and even in fallback, they are honoured (at least, that’s my understanding).

[GS-Alpha]

Originally Posted by White Van Driver

Is this inhibitor a new thing? I've been aware of that inhibitor for a good couple of years and I've certainly never been rostered >3 full 2crew trips in a month (for reference ive never been better than of 90% seniority on the fleet). You can see some rosters with more than 3xjfks but i expect you'd find there's been a swap involved rather than jss doing it.

I'm no expert so could be wrong here, GS-A, genuine question.

I am not on 777, but my friend who’s on it, led me to believe it is a new thing. Looking back through the bid packs though, it looks like it’s been in quite a while so I’m not sure what he’s on about. Apologies for the misleading info.

[wtsmg]

Originally Posted by GS-Alpha

JSS tries to build you a complete roster and you can certainly have a go at completely blocking work you don’t want to do. But if you don’t get a complete roster with the trips remaining, you enter a phase called fallback which incrementally changes the conditions of your bid. As a junior, if you’re asking for stuff that isn’t left by the time it gets to you, you’ll enter fallback and then control over what you asked for flies out the window.

The inhibitors are powerful though, and even in fallback, they are honoured (at least, that’s my understanding).

Thanks.

So it's more "I want to go to X Y Z this month" rather than "Please god anything but 0500 reports" ?

[GS-Alpha]

You can ask to avoid stuff. You can ask to actively go to other places. But if it’s just not possible to build you a complete roster, taking those requests into account, then you’ll then be given anything, and it will obviously have to be stuff you asked to avoid or didn’t ask to go to.

(There is indeed a command which blocks reports before a certain time. But if by the time JSS gets to you, there are only early reports remaining, it’s not going to say “OK mate, I won’t give you any work because you don’t want those early reports.” So you can put in your preferences using a whole host of conditions, but the chances of you getting everything you’ve asked for depends on your relative seniority, and the kind of stuff you’ve asked for.)

[wtsmg]

Originally Posted by GS-Alpha

You can ask to avoid stuff. You can ask to actively go to other places. But if it’s just not possible to build you a complete roster, taking those requests into account, then you’ll then be given anything, and it will obviously have to be stuff you asked to avoid or didn’t ask to go to.

Thanks.

[Lordflasheart]

Swedish Massage

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Is that in effect already? How does it differ from JSS if you don't mind me asking?

Sorry Raph, I have absolutely no idea. I don't do JSS and I only stumbled across the presser by accident yesterday. It seems that VeeOne are now contracted to optimise your JSS rosters. It might be a new wheeze or just more tinkering.

Perhaps VeeOne or Conrad Heald or your union even, might be able to inform.

LFH
...

[Alrosa]

Originally Posted by wtsmg

Thanks.

So it's more "I want to go to X Y Z this month" rather than "Please god anything but 0500 reports" ?

Junior on 320 at LHR. That’s pretty much my bid except it’s avoid all starts before 1100. I’m not a morning person at all. I have to say it works quite well for me, but that’s probably because I don’t care where I go, for how long or on what day !

[White Van Driver]

It might be a good idea here to just give potential joiners a quick rundown of our rostering system, JSS.

Each month the company lists all the trips for a full month. P777 its normally around 1500 or so trips to be shared among the 600ish copilots on the fleet. We then have a few days to put together our bids. This is currently happening now, for March rosters.

You can make up to 15 "bid groups".
In each bid group you have 7 buckets to fill with the trips, using a sequence of commands. Ultimately you can differentiate between the trips however you like... Mondays, report after 11.45am, Caribbean, BA283 on Wednesday, long layovers in Mauritius, anything you like right down to a certain flight number on a certain date.
The 7 buckets range from what JSS will try to give you lots of if it can, down to what it will try to avoid giving you, if it can. You can leave any trips you really dont want outside by not putting them in any bucket at all, and JSS won't even look at those trips for you.
But if it doesn't have enough work to build you a roster, that Bid Group will fail and it'll move onto the next Bid Group.

After it has made a roster for everyone, if it has too many leftover trips, JSS will open up rosters from the bottom up to squeeze more trips onto your month. It'll still try to give you what you've asked for but really all bets are off. This is called Global Constraints and has recently gone all the way to the top of the list causing much frustration.

On a practical level, i find as junior P777 i can't get any particular day off im after, but if i give it 20 destinations i like, it might give me one or two from that list. The rest will be from the lower buckets.

For March, I've tried to get a certain Wed/Thu off for childcare. Then I've tried to get the following weekend off. Then ive tried to avoid JKF EWR ORD. Then I've listed 23 places I like in the top 3 buckets (of approx 45 destinations on the fleet). I'll update here the result if anyone's interested.

Apologies if this post is seen as a bit off piste. But bidding and rostering is such a big part of life at BA I think it probably warrants a discussion...

[wtsmg]

Originally Posted by Alrosa

Junior on 320 at LHR. That’s pretty much my bid except it’s avoid all starts before 1100. I’m not a morning person at all. I have to say it works quite well for me, but that’s probably because I don’t care where I go, for how long or on what day !

Good to hear, thanks bud.

[The Foss]

Originally Posted by Plastic787

which line would that be exactly? There’s no line to be swallowed it’s a matter of simple fact, which some would appear incapable of grasping.

BA had a number in mind, it was never going to be the 1000 or whatever number they originally put forward.
BALPA would’ve stuck to straight LIFO if they could, but had to spin what they could as a win.
If there were an extra 70 vacancies on the 787/350 that would’ve been 70 less in the CRS/PRP, so yes people were made redundant not only on seniority.

[Snr]

Originally Posted by White Van Driver

It might be a good idea here to just give potential joiners a quick rundown of our rostering system, JSS.

Each month the company lists all the trips for a full month. P777 its normally around 1500 or so trips to be shared among the 600ish copilots on the fleet. We then have a few days to put together our bids. This is currently happening now, for March rosters.

You can make up to 15 "bid groups".
In each bid group you have 7 buckets to fill with the trips, using a sequence of commands. Ultimately you can differentiate between the trips however you like... Mondays, report after 11.45am, Caribbean, BA283 on Wednesday, long layovers in Mauritius, anything you like right down to a certain flight number on a certain date.
The 7 buckets range from what JSS will try to give you lots of if it can, down to what it will try to avoid giving you, if it can. You can leave any trips you really dont want outside by not putting them in any bucket at all, and JSS won't even look at those trips for you.
But if it doesn't have enough work to build you a roster, that Bid Group will fail and it'll move onto the next Bid Group.

After it has made a roster for everyone, if it has too many leftover trips, JSS will open up rosters from the bottom up to squeeze more trips onto your month. It'll still try to give you what you've asked for but really all bets are off. This is called Global Constraints and has recently gone all the way to the top of the list causing much frustration.

On a practical level, i find as junior P777 i can't get any particular day off im after, but if i give it 20 destinations i like, it might give me one or two from that list. The rest will be from the lower buckets.

For March, I've tried to get a certain Wed/Thu off for childcare. Then I've tried to get the following weekend off. Then ive tried to avoid JKF EWR ORD. Then I've listed 23 places I like in the top 3 buckets (of approx 45 destinations on the fleet). I'll update here the result if anyone's interested.

Apologies if this post is seen as a bit off piste. But bidding and rostering is such a big part of life at BA I think it probably warrants a discussion...

Good breakdown of how JSS works. In addition I'd say that roster satisfaction is highly dependent on how picky you want to be, and the higher up the list the more picky you can be whilst still getting a decent roster.

I'm approx 70% on my seat on SH, and commute from a UK base, so my bids focus around grouping work together, avoiding day trips, and night stopping at home. Not bothered about weekends off, or specific destinations (other than home), so happy to take anything that meets the above criteria. Rosters are pretty good on the whole, and with some swapping you can get what you want.

If, as a new joiner, you want every Saturday/Sunday off, with all high credit day trips (i.e. fewer days at work), and want X night stop on Y date, then you may be disappointed, but if you're relaxed about what you get then the rosters aren't half bad. And the beauty of BA is every month you rise up the seniority a little bit more, so life will always get better.