The upside is it moves quickly (well at the moment anyway) on the Airbus P2 List and roster satisfaction will improve faster (if it’s indeed possible to be satisfied by a JSS roster). Not anywhere near as fast moving at the bottom of the Long Haul fleets.

I presume you are still within your engagement freeze Rex? I know you were hoping for the 787, but unfortunately long haul is popular so there is no need to release people from a freeze.

GS-Alpha I know what you’re saying but that just relates to an overall volume of pilots to be replaced company wide. The post I was replying to said 250 Airbus FOs to be trained this year. If you’re talking about an individual fleet then surely the replacements will be on a one for one basis (seeing as virtually no one bids for P32L/X internally) so if 100 pilots move seat from the Airbus this year, plus we’re 40 pilots shy then that’s a total of 140 Airbus Pilots to replace whilst the overall requirement for pilots company wide remains at around 250.

Anyway all this is a moot point for prospective joiners because the fundamental crux of it is that if you’re looking to join BA on the Airbus your chances are good right now.

Yes to the engagement freeze, I started right at the beginning of 2016. A couple of months earlier I could have been in luck.

Except that the overall need for pilots company wide has been published by the department, as just under 300 pilots. I personally think 250 is probably a rounded up figure by trainers who know that the company often changes the plan and demands more of them. I can easily see the figure being above 200, and 250 should not be taken with a pinch of salt.

I know it is disappointing not to get that move you were hoping for, and some lucky people do occasionally get released from their freeze when needs must, but unfortunately it is not the norm. With a super high training requirement on short haul already, it is unsurprising that they are not adding to it by releasing more A320 FOs than the agreements dictate.

Play the game. Bang in the application and pic up some overtime if you can

Or Dave

(I’ll get my coat)

Some terrible advice by others here. Be careful signing the application declaration saying you have xxx hours/sectors when you do not.

A320!GW
RTFQ
Spend at least five days on the initial application and run it past friends as to its authenticity
HR do not like people winging it.

Hello folks,

Starting soon A320 LHR and looking forward to it.

Couple of quick questions, if I may...

-Am assuming I will start on the newly ratified £63,xxx DEP scale (as per PPJN) not the £58,xxx I signed electronically a month or so back?
-Any top tips for getting the “best” commutable rosters? (I am looking purely to minimise total commuting time and expenses on my own $ and have no issues with working long days/all weekends/deep nights/loads of sectors etc)
-Have read the thread fully but did we find a conclusive answer to exactly how junior SH LHS is running at the moment?
-Likelihood of getting LH inside initial engagement freeze? And does a rating on a BA LH type “help” or is it purely seniority?
-Any idea how long until one could realistically expect to achieve 50% working pattern?
-Any other top tips?

Many thanks!

FRYVA: first off congratulations and welcome

LH inside of your engagement freeze is very very rare for SH to LH.
Commuting roster: It’s going to be tough to have any control for a good year or more. It all depends how many join under you. My advice would be to bid for 2-5 day tours as H++. You should be able to easily get 2 day 6 tours but you may need to do some trading or swapping with other pilots.

Pay, you will be on the same as everyone so the new rate effective 1st Jan.

Aspirational part time is currently not available. Right to request is generally 2 years, put your request in ASAP and see what happens. You can always decline it.

Commands, someone will correct me as I did not pay much attention to the bids but I thing LHR commands were around 7-8 years. Gatwick a little less. The general trend is returning towards 10-12 years for SH, 20...ish for LH.

Advice. Find a local LHR hang out. You will need it for reserve if more than 2 hours away and for the odd night stop at LHR. Crew will help you out on that one with all the tricks.

Buy us yourself a reusable cup because Pret give you 50p off with each coffee ;)

FRYVA
If you’re happy to do 4 sector days and nights/ very earlies then you will find swapping your roster with others relatively easy.

I’m only a year in and although I can’t choose where I go or usually when, I can mould a rough working pattern which suits family life. Expect reserve 4 times a year though which is absolutely awful for commuting, awful in general if you ask me but that’s another story.

LGW commands look about 3-4yrs seniority, as bex says, LHR fair bit more 6+yrs.

Cant add much else. Welcome aboard.

The reserve thing is important to note, especially as a commuter. As a new joiner you start on the bare minimum reserve points, not on the fleet average reserve points like you do when moving fleets. So, although you were led to believe one reserve period per year during the hard sell on the interview day, when joining the company you do an inordinate amount of reserve. As the green machine has said, at least four a year and worst case is every other month.

That’s a realistic assumption, though it’s “only” for three weeks not a month, since the (usually) first 7 days of 28 day reserve block are fixed days off.

You might be able to swing some reserve from home if you are blessed with late evening transport links to LHR, since on a standard reserve day you are only contactable in the evening from 1700-2000 U.K. time for work beginning (potentially early) the next day..however the reality is that on most days you don’t get assigned a trip you will be assigned Home standby ( long chunks of the day on 2 hours notice) and in shorthaul there is also standby at the airport.

Falling Penguin just to give you my example on Short Haul. I commute from Jersey and was at Heathrow for three years. Reserve was a pain but I was fortunate that my landlady in Horley from my days commuting in easyJet (Gatwick) had another spare room which she would rent to me for three weeks provided I gave her enough notice. Then, because of the early reports and the prohibitive cost of paying for a national express coach every time I was called, I rented a car for three weeks, which was usually pretty cheap. I used rentalcars.com which usually directed you to Interrent (the “low cost” offshoot of Europcar) which was pretty cheap.

I think the best price I got was £128 for 21 days of rental (cheaper and less risky than bringing my car over on the boat). The reason it’s so cheap is because they nickel and dime you with extra charges, like an extortionate rate for extra miles above the 90 miles a day they give you. 90 miles was fine for a Gatwick-Heathrow return trip so even if you were called every day (which doesn’t happen) you’ve still got a fair few miles to use the car for other things. In summary, it’s not easy and it’s a bit of a pain but that first year or so of doing reserve a lot will get expensive.

Long Haul I doubt you’d have to rent a car as long as you were staying in striking range of Gatwick or Heathrow as you could just National Express coach it from Gatwick or better if you’re staying around Heathrow just hop on the bus. No early reports and much fewer (I would imagine) last minute two hour call outs, which even then is still achievable from Gatters with the frequency of coaches up to Heathrow every day.

Its easy to tell you’re Long Haul and I’m Short Haul, Wiggy because our definitions of an early report are very different! :ok:

Fair point!

(the crux of my point about the earlies was really just to say that there’s no frequency of coaches from Gatwick to Heathrow from dead of night almost until about 06:30 or so for the early Heathrow reports but Falling Penguin need not even stay near Gatwick it’s just what I used to do for ease of getting home).

I appreciate no one has a crystal ball, but is it likely that BA will continue to recruit in the numbers they have done for the last five years? I can think of reasons why recruitment would increase in the way it has done (retirements, leavers, part time, expansion), but have trouble expecting that any of those would lead to a sustained intake of ~200 DEPs per year.

I’ve probably not considered something obvious, and I don’t have access to the numbers for this stuff, but there seems to be quite a lot of potential for new joiners to sit close to the bottom of the list for a long time.

~200 pilots a year does seem like a lot to sustain but it is actually only 5% of the workforce, which doesn’t seem that difficult to imagine with a bit of expansion, retirement, demand for part time, and recently recruited pilots deciding BA isn’t quite what they expected.