I would absolutely agree with the above, I have been at BA 2.5 years LHR SH and I can honestly say the last 18 months has been the most challenging of my 15 year career. I personally don’t dislike BA but my wife sure does! My children are 4 and I never see them, my wife works full time during the week and come the weekend is stuck looking after children on her own. She constantly makes jokes about being a single parent and if this continues there is a very real chance she might be. The seniority system disproportionately protects the pay and lifestyle of those at the top and it’s a very difficult pill to swallow but it will never change. As for joining BA I would say if your ambition is to be a LH SFO for at least 20 years and you don’t mind not seeing your family for the first 5 then go for it there honestly is no where else you will achieve this. But if you want command or long term SH then almost anywhere else might be better for you.

I cannot see there being a great deal of pressure for BA to increase super junior command pay. As far as they are concerned, you join BA as an FO and serve your time as an FO until you gain the seniority for a short haul command perhaps seven or eight years later, by which time your command pay would be more competitive. If a new pilot is lucky enough to join at a time when command seniority is unusually low, they will see it as that new pilot being in the right place at the right time, and so obtaining a super junior command with its associated payrise. There possibly is some pressure to increase junior FO pay, which may then increase the low end command salary as FO pay is currently 75% of command pay across all paypoints.

More likely, if it is ever determined that there is a problem with recruitment numbers or junior pilot retention, then I would predict some kind of bonus payment after x years within the company, rather than a skewing of the salary scale.

This period of super junior short haul commands is almost certainly a blip. We had a recruitment ban for many years, and then suddenly we are in a period of rapid recruitment and postings and promotions movement. As that stabilises, short haul command seniorities will rise again.

You can bid LH FO to SH cpt.

You can bid to go SH cpt to LH capt.

(health warning..that’s how it works under the current agreement)

year 14..you “slide across” pay points...

I indentify with your post and found it interesting. Just a point I think worth highlighting. I’m junior LH. Just a point of fairness to senior LH in trying to be representative in what I’ve noticed.

For folk looking in from the outside, CAP doesn’t drop as you become more senior. There’s no senior full timers flying 3 short trips a month for example. Chatting to friends outside of it this misconception does seem to exist - “get in a few years and write your own roster” type of gig.

Previously under the old (bidline) system you could bid for lines that had a higher amount of credit efficient trips. These type trips involved more hours over a shorter time frame. But this is in context. You can only work with what’s provided by BA on the dinner plate. Granted, you have more control the more senior you are, and JSS is being watched with interest to see how this is affected once the line system disappears.

The ability to afford part time on PP24 aside, I’ve rarely seen full time senior LHs who are away a huge amount less from home than the juniors. Many still have the trip/2 day off/trip rash somewhere on a leave free line on my fleet. Granted they might fly to less unpopular places and have a couple of weekends off. But only they can answer whether that’s a tradable commodity with how bushed they are overall. That many are going for part time would say otherwise.

Certainly FA and problems with using bank, have caused dismay from everyone. I mentioned in a previous post, and certainly seems to have been highlighted by a couple of retired posters - that when the agreements were forged, the system worked due to the then landscape of the BA operation. BA, naturally doing what businesses do have prodded and poked around, discovering chinks in the armour, elegantly finding work arounds to exploit naively created thin walls and side effects of the system.

A new rostering interface could be (I say could be, I don’t know) well placed to push further against these weak areas of the bidline rules. Just like any business, they will do what money makers will do. I’ve alluded to some of my personal opinions - I think this new efficiency is highlighting fundamental issues in the industry rather than my fixating and targeting my opinions solely at company level.

I think it quite telling that part time is something highly sought, not just in BA. This fact completely disarms a company convincingly asserting aircrew are money driven entities using lifestyle as a bargaining chip. Quite the opposite, it starkly tells a different story. Fatigue and well being aren’t tradeable with income and that many are being forced to forgo one for the other points - to me - at the trajectory and current state for aircrews to find such lack of protection they’re being forced to try and mitigate the affects themselves.


I always have to remember there’s plenty of folk who’ve never worked outside of BA and until recent years perhaps limited experience of what life is like when you butt up against the unsavoury ramifications of “efficient” FTL construction. At that point do you target your dismay with the local rules or with the regulations that allow these practices? I’d argue for long term protection of aircrew wellbeing you have to tackle both - two pronged. At the local coal face level and also at the wider mother hen level.

I could not agree more!

Thats a fair point and would be wrong if I disagreed.

People are different and of course there are folk perfectly happy on full time with various companies who request part time for other reasons other than to do with health or wellbeing.

I honestly think there’s enough part time requests across the UK airline industry in recent times that are down to the job affecting employees adversely, not just by fatigue, such that it’s more than notable.

I mentioned fatigue but that is far from the only factor. There’s chronic stress and it’s associated symptoms, homelife disruption, health issues due to shift work.

Do you know many long tours were to be had and were the long tours restricted by any inhibitors?

If there aren’t many and there weren’t subject to an inhibitor then I guess they’ve been corralled by the senior guys....one of the potential pitfalls of JSS “as is”....

(For those not into the language “inhibiters” are restrictions placed into JSS that effect certain trips (e.g. Singapore,) to prevent a handful of senior individuals getting all the plum work..e.g. stop somebody bidding for 3 or 4 Singapore’s in a month. )

Exactly why I’m escaping down to Gatwick, it’s a known quantity and have a bolt hole down there I can use for peanuts. The only qualifier I would put NoCtot is how many people actually participated in the dry run. I know i didn’t and I would imagine the results are fairly meaningless in terms of output as the participation was somewhat limited.

I don’t think I’d be breaching any rules if I said that according to a source on Yammer it was about 65%, plus or minus not a lot for both seats on the LHR Airbus Fleet.

Well Wiggy from a cursory glance on Yammer it’s become clear what an utter turd we have voted for, thanks Balpa!

Well I’m sure somebody will be along again the t*** about this again but as I recall it:

1. Those formerly at the top of BA BALPA decided to effectively combine a vote on a rostering system with a vote on an element of our pay.....I have to say that IMHO was not that BACC’s finest hour.

2. The membership then voted .....

Purely a facetious comment on this occasion Wiggy in the light of previous discussion. :ok:

Just checked out the JSS yammer. 6 trips/ 2 days off plus leave on the dry run type thing.

Reading the Yammer comments is very similar to reading those now famous amazon reviews of using “Veet for men” on your gentleman vegetables.

Wonder of the lack lack of participation affected that or if the AI is doing exactly as the AI would do (I think calling it intelligent probably a stretch)?

I couldn’t help wondering, are you in the top third (over 67% behind you) or the top quarter (over 75% behind you)?