How long from confirmation of hold pool to hearing - currently waiting at the moment!

I think that varies a bit depending on the positions they are filling at the time, and your experience.

From what others have told me, A couple of months generally for an offer for 787/777/320 at the moment. Guess that could change either way though.

For me it was only 48hrs. They needed to fill a slot quickly, and I matched the requirements.

Good man - congratulations, applied through the DEP longhaul, did the sim on the 5th of Jan and got the confirmation last week but no other information apart from that! When's your start date?

2 weeks for me from hold pool to offer. But yes this varies on your experience and notice period available.

Very good point re notice period being a factor. Mine was 3 months, but people with less might be able to take places at short notice I guess.

I completely skipped the pool. Sim till startdate 93 days. Notice period was 90 days..

When did you do your sim?! This is insane - what do they want you on?

Cheers. I passed mid December. Start end of March. 380.

Entered the pool in Oct, offered 777 last week starting April. Looks like things are starting to move quickly for everyone waiting. Good luck everyone.

Sim in June somewhere, started in September on the 787

Excuse my ignorance and possibly misdirected hope in this matter, but it seems BA are still very much desperate for pilots, although now it's mostly for long haul. What's to stop them from taking the boys and girls with less than the 1000 hours of jet (possibly 0 hours jet :rolleyes:) that are already in the hold pool for LH rather than SH? I don't see anything legality wise, so is there a lot of extra training involved to comply with regulations or is this just BA's own made up limit that they technically could change if they so wished?

Thanks for any help clearing this up :ok:

Otto

You make an interesting point. And not having anything to do for 15 minutes here's my thoughts - it comes with a major BS warning !!

I initially thought it was an insurance thing .... ie the insurance company gives BA a preferred rate based on prescribed experience levels. But I've flown with many skippers who went direct onto 'the classic' strait out of the RAF (fast jet) and also some from ATRs at CityFlyer.

Now of course the tornado is a jet but given the total lack of handling similarities with it and a heavy pax jet it's hard to see how these guys were deemed any more proficient than say a current Dash8 pilot (for example) - yet sure enough there are dozens or Harrier and Tornado guys who back in the mid 90s lef the service and went straight onto the 747-2. The Cityflyer turboprop guys and gals are a rarer breed but it did happen and hence it proves its sure as hell not insurmountable. In fact IMHO having flown private, regional, short, medium and LH - the turboprop regional was by far the most challenging aircraft to fly and I venture to say I would have taken to longhaul (380) like a duck to water.

Now in both cases above (RAF & Cityflyer et al) circuit training in some very heavy tin was done and thats currently not part of the BA training dept zeitgeist.

Any thoughts (very succinctly) on what Virgin will do with their cadet cruise-pilots. X years down the line they're gonna be ready for the 'upgrade' and either have to do circuits or be farmed out for a year or two a bit like Thomas Cook did to Flybe.

Blue skies to all

CB

I would suggest that with sub-2000hrs, going into an environment where you'll land infrequently, sometimes to the point of being near to going out of recency, would do you no favours at all. Just an opinion, and not linked to anyone's policy.

I have to agree. Family friend on LH did only 11 landings in a 6 month period last year. 2 were CAT II/III autoland, so only 9 manual landings.


Compare that to shorthaul where you might get 5-10 a week rather than 2 a month

Thanks for the replies, and I would very much agree with you guys on recency and so forth. That would explain the 2000 hour demand with which I agree, it's more the jet part of it that I would dare to suggest isn't absolutely necessary. Funnily enough I would actually prefer SH to start with and then see what happens, but I'd rather get in at all and straight in on LH than to be timed out in the pool just for being a TP:er... :}

The other thing to remember is that on LH you'll be acting PIC when the skipper's in the bunk so there are also experience requirements related to that.

what about when skipper goes for a piss on SH

Anyone prepared to share any recent sim feedback as they've now changed from the 747 to the 757?

Nothing seems to have changed apart from the sim itself. The best tip I can give is to buy 757 Professional for X-Plane. It was identical to the real thing except for the speed tape was missing. Even the power settings worked. Helped me feel much more relaxed knowing where everything was. Got into the hold pool just before Christmas.

Yep.

:E Well...unless he/she's got a rather large bladder or serious GI problems they aren't likely to be off the flight deck for several hours.......