i joined from another LH airline and this is the most knackered I’ve ever been. Partly my fault as I knew the method of the rosters. I think BA’s version of LH is elegantly draining. All the flip flop shift reversals with little time to recover for enough weeks to ensure when you do hit leave or a block off you sort of collapse over the line ha. They’re experts at it. I’ve got to admire that. 5 (a fifth of a month!) missing nights sleep a month becomes my problem, not theirs :0 .

What’s not my fault is it’s changed (ing) , optimising since I’ve arrived. What existed when I signed up is moving around under my feet a little. Bidline as a concept is (was) good, don’t get me wrong. But I am surprised at whoever agreed to the the whole CAP thing back in t’ day, emphasis on the number CAP is/ lack of blocks off after LH had their pants pulled right down. Maybe folk who’d never worked outside of BA and they thought they were onto a good number? God knows.

I know having been elsewhere flying life can be really amazingly bad outside of BA (been there, worn the cheap t shirt :o ). But that’s not really any kind of answer. Less gets said/ admitted but the ability to recover or actually use time off after trips can also be a lot better.

All the details and why’s and wherefores are by the by to me. It’s hardly entirely BA’s fault anyway. Money makers will always do what money makers will do. Business attracts naturally greedy people to the top table. And they will do what they will do. Squeeze. The whole idea is we need folk to protect the greedy ones from running amok, then it works well for everyone...

We do have a regulator. I personally think the regulators are a circus act with protecting health in the flying workplace. They’re fine keen about defining the high health standards they want yet notable by their sqirmyness when it comes to having the the brass balls to address the causes of issues the medical lot say kills people. Smoking ban? Yeah fine - ban that as it doesn’t harm the bottom line of big aviation firms. Fly with booze in your body? Oh no, ban that, that’s unsafe, plus the public friggin hate it like the devil. Easy one that to pop a rule on. Land with sleep deprivation equivalent to 5 glasses of wine? “Oh, Er, mm, what’s that over there? Moving on.... I know let’s call this line in the sand, “fatigue” and paint it into the corner along with what causes stress in flying (another thorny one). It’ll be a vague untouchable unreachable thing, a bit like unicorn tears. Yes, Lets define it as something impossible to get. All the rest is “tiredness” and, well, that’s easy. That’s just like you get after a fat man Sunday lunch. Yes those pilots shift reversing are all “tired” that’s it. We’ll also chuck in an after-the-fact approach - make up a few touchy feely “support” and monitoring systems. Essentially means airlines can quietly file reports of this mythical “fatigue” in the grey tin file unit by the desk. Means we don’t have to address the causes and look like a real British regulator anytime the press ask us about it. Job done. We can’t possibly admit the current set up with aviation needs a big kick in the balls”. Bloody useless...

I tend to look if I can enjoy home life and going to work. Im a bear of simple brain and my small brain is just telling me I’m frigging knackered :) Can you tell? :)

The whole thing worked when I was a lad (and at the risk of proving that the past is another country) because:

1. It was possible to work up to 15 hours below CAP whenever you fancied or needed to, safe in the knowledge that BA couldn’t stick another trip on your line, regardless of whether you had banked hours or not..OTOH the “Martinis” who wanted to pick up the leftover work for cash were nowhere near 900 hours so they could pick up the slack..

That flexibility has gone.

2. BA was willing to run the pilot establishment to some extent to allow point 1.

They are not now.

3. Less frequent services often meant longer trips with embedded shuttles (Up to a week in the likes of HRE or CCS, with a shuttle somewhere on just one or two of those days) . In other words a significant amount of credit towards CAP was earned downroute sitting on your backside by a pool, on a beach or playing golf (i.e. possibly the lifestyle some who are joining are expecting still to find at BA...well ..)...

There are a handful of those sort of trips still around (e.g. NAS with a shuttle, perhaps some longer slips on the 787, Some Caribbean and the 9 day SYD trip on the 777) OTOH long trips don’t appeal to some people but they have their uses for generating downtime whilst still on the company’s dollar, however because of the increase in frequency of services over the years there’s now a heck of a lot of three day stuff which only earns about 20% of CAP....which somebody has to do....

Now of course if :hmm: JSS comes in and if it works as advertised things might change...

what airline have you come from ? With that many hours (if your used to SH) you may as well go SH and get command in a few years , Or slog it at the bottom of seniority for LH for a looooooong time

It’s 900 hours over 10.5 months as you get four weeks of leave and two “duty free weeks” (which are broadly the same thing), meaning 85 hours per (worked) month. However, we work on credit hours not flown hours. The annual total target credit hours on longhaul is 1055 (I think), which also includes a credit hour value for leave, sims, etc. It’s no coincidence that when the leave credit, sim credit and so on are removed, the answer gets very close to 900 and as most trip credit is flying hour based (long trips of which there are few are calculated slightly differently), you need to average 85 flying hours per month worked.

At the risk of sounding flippant but in fact trying to be totally honest I’d say there are at about 4000 people who would also like to understand exactly how the rostering system known as JSS is going to work at BA ..i.e. most of the current pilot workforce.

It’s a trip preferencing system where supposedly you can express options for trips, days off, start times...blah blah..system works it’s way down the pilot seniority list trying to satisfy preferences in some way shape or form...the system is supposed to be introduced in about 4 weeks time so that the rosters it produces will be the one’s we are working to w.e.f. 1 Jan.

However:

At the time of writing there has been a first attempt at a dry run where there were insufficient participants to produce meaningful output, so we have no idea what those rosters would have looked like.

We then had a second dry run where there seems to have been a problem producing results..we are promised them any day now but as of yet nothing - so nobody has any idea what those rosters would have looked like.

We have been promised a third dry run before the system goes live for the January bid.......time is short.....


And now you know about as much about JSS as most of us do......

..and guess what? We fly 6 hour legs...

For those still wearing rose tinted glasses a warning.. Longhaul at BA is not all 10-14 hour plus sector lengths such as Singapore, Buenos Aries and Hong Kong etc

..Leaving aside the occasional outliers that appear on the 777 or 744 rosters as daytrips such as Madrid and Moscow BA longhaul covers the likes of:

Tel Aviv ( 5 hours, plus or minus), Cairo, (sometimes, 5 hours ish)

Abuja/Lagos/Accra/ Boston,/Montreal and countless others at around 6 hours, plus or minus.

Now the senior guys might pick up two or three Longish sector round trips in the month and then perhaps a short trip to finesse the hours..that works fine....OTOH if you get clobbered with a month of low flight time trips you need to do a lot of days and nights at work to achieve the target hours.

I’ll hopefully be moving over to Long Haul in two years time however looking at the rosters of the junior trash on LH leads me to believe that 75% Right to Request will be essential in order to cope and have a life outside of work as a bloke in my fourties by the time it comes around. With the process running at over a year from application to the part time being granted that means possibly banging in a request next year. Whether I’ll be able to afford it I’m not even sure but one thing is for sure, I’m not working myself into an early death just to line the pockets of Alex Cruz and Willie Walsh.

As mentioned there are stacks of flights that aren’t long on flight time. In isolation block hours are a red herring of judging how throughly exhausting the style of LH BA flies is. You’re out of bed the whole second night of a 3 days trip regardless. its the amount of nights out of bed and the amount of time off between trips. Of course higher block hours per trip theoretically mean less trips required to make cap and less nights out of bed. But there simply aren’t enough (on my fleet anyway) to give respite. With a theoretical high credit, 3 day 20 hour credit trip you’d have to do 4 and a bit of them to make cap. 4.5 this summer. So that’s where the 5 plus trips comes from when you have a mixture. You don’t get many lines of 3 day 20 hour credit trips :)

How on earth has BALPA been allowed to agree such punishment on the rostering systems , especially in LH. I retired on the B744 when BA were only allowed to roster 4 Atlantic crossing trips per Bid Period. You could bid for more in MU1 or Open Time, but that was your choice.
Preumably todays pilots are suddenly immune to fatigue as far as BA/BALPA are concerned. And if you did agree to help BA on last minute uncovered trips you could pick up £2000ish overtime to Syd.

Because Balpa in BA are A) Sh1t scared of the company and B) only interested in protecting the senior Long Haul boys and their terms and conditions and the rest of us can go hang (especially Short Haul as the general assumption is that nobody in BA really wants to be a Short Haul Pilot and everyone wants to be on a Long Haul fleet long term anyway so it’s an easy give away for concessions to the company). These are the reasons I won’t give Balpa a penny, go on tell me I’m wrong.

The union in this country is fecking useless. They dally and fiddle. You’ve only got to read the magazine to see they’re nibbling away at the small stuff whilst the big stuff sails by. They’re like a workman on the titanic worrying about wonky table legs. The rest of the world has become more enlightened and forward thinking regarding lifestyle issues and their impact on mortality and health.

Aviation. An arrogant hypocritical industry with regulators full of old flying boys who don’t like change. The attitude hasn’t changed since the 1930s. To prove how full of it they are, if damage to the public were a factor, whatever practice would be nipped in the bud. If it were found that running an engine beyond limits would blow it up, there’d be a rule. But when it comes to pilots health? The response is “it’s down to the pilots”. So compared to the public, you’re sacrificial. And the best bit is, pilots being institutionalised in their professionalism will absolutely not let this affect work. In fact, it’s their private life and own well being that suffers. Pilots will literally sacrifice their well being at the alter of their profession.

We”ve all seen it. The little talks during SEP about “managing fatigue” or “stress”. The pointing out there’s “support” for mental health. As if we’re meant to be wowed by this approach?? Yup, it’s down to you. We want the high standards, high medical levels but we’re blowed if we’re going to help you stand a chance of staying well by addressing the factors. That’s gonna cost too much and would mean the whole system needs rebooting (sharp intake of breath). Thats it, straight out of the 19th century. That’s it, the best a modern regulator and it’s industry can come up with in supposedly the most advanced forward thinking industry around. To paraphrase a film, Rumour control, here are the facts. Stress, fatigue and sleep deprivation shorten your life. And we let these clowns get away with this without blowing the whistle. Like I said, it’s not entirely BA’s fault. We have the CAA for a reason and they’re failing at keeping pace with the 21st century medical and wellbeing view outside of aviation.

Wireless, that is such an incredibly accurate description of the state of affairs 👍

Hear Hear Wireless 👏

Bidline began to be hollowed out 10-15 years ago CP., and the rate of hollowing out has increased over the years. I think it was effectively as dead as a Norwegian Blue once Roster Assign came in (the ability of the company to put extra work on your line after Stage 2, regardless of where you were relative to CAP) but the name was kept I think for political reasons, as in “under us you still have Bidline”.

The “why’s” have been hinted at by previous posters so I won’t pour any more fuel on that particular fire. Many of us hope that the recent changes at the top of BA BALPA might improve matters, but there also needs to a readjustment in attitude from some of the line membership who are perhaps still reluctant to appear to be unreasonable to friends and neighbours.

I was interested to see why I’m feeling so bushed at the min. I’ve just looked back at the past 28 days. In the previous rolling 23 day period there’s been 4 complete trips and one sim. After my next trip in the previous rolling 28 days it’ll be 5 whole trips and one sim.

Quite compact I suppose. But looking about that’s not anything unusual to other folk down the list. And my blindlines over the last 3 weeks look smiliar to how it’s been for people on reserve.

You’re not wrong, but that takes us back to the whole issue of establishment and why after years of operating under Bidline with no such epidemic suddenly one started.....I suspect many knew “Bidline was broken” a few years back and it should have been rebranded to reflect the change from the sort of lifestyle control Bidding system the likes of cessnapete and others enjoyed for quite some time. I suspect some simply weren’t prepared to admit it so the name stuck....anyhow with JSS on the way that is all water under the bridge, especially since as it stands “JSS appears to be broke”.....

Well, that’s easy enough. You re wrong. In fact, you’re wrong on a grand scale.

Nobody in BALPA is scared of BA; far from it, son.

Protecting Long Haul Barons? A well worn argument. We’ve got one of our most respected CC reps leaving his long haul throne to take a Short Haul command. The chairman is a flat earther. The Gatwick reps (shorthaul by definition) are beyond reproach. There’s a shorthaul captain doing awesome work for the training team and the pay team. I suppose you know better than me, though?

You don’t want to give BALPA a penny? That’s your call, dude. Feel free to ride your brothers’ coat tails. Can I assume you’ll be happy to accept the pay rise we’re currently negotiating? Does that make you a hypocrite? You decide.

Bash the company or the union with facts and you won’t hear a word from me. Go public with ill informed opinions and I’ll counter.

All - if you're hoping to join BA, please canvass opinion from all sources. It ain’t great, anymore, but it ain’t complete !!!!e, either. It’s definitely not for everyone, but it’s a step up from most places. It’s all your call.

Cheers, y’all.

Buter

Hi mate can you please empty your inbox apparently it’s full as my message won’t send regarding BA stuff over PM

Well said Buter, I have always wondered how people can do nothing but moan yet at the same time not be part of the organisation that is trying, with varying degrees of success, to maintain or improve our lot. Complain about JSS... did you vote for it? No, not a manner of BALPA, ergo can’t really complain because you aren’t invested enough in the future to actually be in the recognised union take part.

Daddy. BA shorthaul is no where near the toughest gig in the U.K. For example I haven’t done a 4 sector day for a good 2 years, other than in disruption I haven’t landed after midnight for a similar time, I get fed, I stay in great hotels, I work for the company (rather than be a contractor) and thus get a good pension (yes I know it’s not what it used to be but show me one that is) etc etc etc. There is a lot of BA bashing on here, there are always a vocal few but I wonder what the feeling would be like if you went into the CRC and took a quick poll? A fair bit of dissatisfaction but what percentage of people would up sticks and move jobs..

Not all rosy in the garden I hear Buter.
SH Capt doing great work for the Training dept? I thought it was a LH TC doing that?
I hear a number of LH TCs are considering resigning from BALPA.
Pay rise for all ?

DF,
Like choosing a mortgage picking an airline is a compromise.
For some EZY is a better proposition than BA for others it isn’t.
You have to think long term. For some nights in their own bed is important for others nightstopping on LH destinations is attractive. Then again some favour nights in other people’s beds.

Think long term, the hassle to swap airlines can be great. What you want today could be v different to what you want in your mid 50s.

The evidence would suggest, in the main with notable exceptions, that pilots gravitate to LH and only return to SH for a command and then go back to LH at the earliest opportunity. When considering EZY over BA whatever lifestyle suits you now or even what you think will suit you in the future may change.
The comparison of seniority numbers for commands on various fleets in BA is telling as to what the majority of people consider the best place to be is.

In BA 85% is fine ( well perhaps good)
10% is irritating/frustrating/bad
5% of it is a nightmare.

For starters, you may not be talking about me but seeing as the context of this conversation is a rebuttal of my comments I’ll assume that you are. Where was I complaining about JSS? I actually have a suspicion for some short haulers it’s going to be better as it gets rid of the problem that in Bidline 95% of the lines are a mixture of daytrips and tours which satisfy virtually nobody. But the crux of it is that I wasn’t even allowed to vote on my future be it JSS or Bidline because I hadn’t been in the company long enough! How unjust is that? Yeah you’ve got thirty years left here but you’re not allowed to have a say in how that will go because you’ve only been here a few months.

It’s my conscious decision to have left the Union, which I am entitled to have made as a grown adult. It doesn’t deserve condescending comments like being called “son” or the seemingly resentful accusation of “riding our coattails”. I’m not going to make any further comments as to my perception of those who hide behind anonymity to talk down so severely to someone on an Internet forum, I’ll just leave it there.

Lets see just how successful the pay negotiations are, I’ll be happy to be proved wrong (and it might even sway my decision whether to rejoin or not) but I’m expecting RPI plus a bit, which in context isn’t really that much of a result, some may even say it would be subpar compared to other companies recently.

Rex
I can see clearly could be in breach of the trade descriptions act.
Buter is well Buter. He may do us all some good we’ll have to wait and see.

DF,
LH is not all bad on family life. The problem is foreseeing what you will want in 20 years time when it’s too late to change.

Thats it spot on. It is a challenge. I didn’t think to reply to Mr Angry, unless you’ve tried LH, it is a bit of a mystery.

Similar to you mention, whether you adjust to local or not the elephant in the room isn’t the jet lag per say on a 3 day quick fire trips (local light sources, diet, rhythmn of local life) more the rest periods run in multiples of 24 hours. A bit like shift work problems. Means you can’t sleep two proper periods in 24 (unless you’re super human). So like you say, no matter what you do, on a 24 hour layover you’re missing a sleep cycle.

Mr Angry’s post mentioned striving for recovery on company time. The achievable is quite the opposite. Due to previously mentioned rest periods (24/48) that are antagonistic to the circadian rhythm, far from being able to recover on Co time, your time “on clock” is actively further disrupting your sleep cycle each time you undertake another 24/48 rest. Attempting recovery is forced onto days off. And this is where it can become a somewhat futile pursuit; dual aspects of limited time to achieve this and another shift reversal to adjust for within a small time frame. There is often not enough time to recover the sleep deficit and then re adjust your now night shift cycle back to days. Particularly on 2 days off, and noteably if one has any semblance of local life around him/her that is following U.K. time that may detract from a free ability to sleep when required. And that is even before days off are considered to be free of fatigue issues enough to be downtime in their own right; in essence, to experience required personal time free from work inflictions enough to enjoy all the psychological benefits that bestows. After all, we’re not machines!

This is not a unique BA characteristic, however BA do have an increasingly achievable high personal pilot annual hours work rate for a euro LH airline. I’ve noticed it a lot on my fleet with the work rate at the moment with not common rosters characterised with runs of 2 days off post trip. This increasingly effective ability to utilise its worker units (an open question with a new rostering system) is - despite industrial agreements forged in good faith under a different landscape - amplifying the empirically flawed and questionable ethics of the underpinning regulatory protection system that manages humans working for the flying industry.

I find it insightful to at least know and discuss the mechanics of why fatigue starts really ramping up on LH with a packed roster. It’s for differing reasons than SH.

Interesting, I read a study from the FAA mentioned something like no duty must be planned unless it’s conceivable that the Pilot has had a chance to gain 6 hours (or was it 8?) sleep within the preceding 24 hours. I gather this includes the whole duty. So you can’t be landing at 0900 unless between 0900 the day before and then, you’d slept fully and not half arsed on a seat for an hour. If that were the case then most 24 hour lay overs would fall foul of that one. I’ll be honest I don’t know the FAA FTL regs.

350. + new entrants read next year,700 courses total,50 Commands LGW 320, 80 LHR SH 70 LH

Buter. I think a good number feel as though they are not represented by the union and therefore left or decided not to join. It’s not easy, how does a union represent any pilot on the extreme ends of the seniority scale? The union represents its members and I can only feel the demographic of that membership is to the higher end of the seniority list. I could well be very wrong but it’s how it sounds out there. The junior guys also have themselves to blame because they don’t have a voice or chose to leave. A union that reached out to them and acknowledge their demographic may find a receptive bunch who are happy to support the union. They just need to see that the union actually is wanting to work for them too.

i believe we will soon have SH captains on perhaps PP 2 or 3. That’s 83k. Jet2 is now 106k basic, RYR 109k basic and EZY DEC 105k basic. That’s how far we have fallen behind. RPI plus a few % is maybe ok for some but not across the board. A320 captains basic pay starts at 78k and goes up to 148k. How can we continue to pay two pilots doing the same job such vastly different salaries. I have always found it odd that BA showers you with cash once your kids have left home and you have paid your mortgage. It makes no sense in the modern world. The pay needs a huge shake up and when I say that I don’t mean let’s cut the pay of the guys at the top.

When you see and hear guys laughing about JSS “junior shafting system” and “that’s it I will never work another weekend” it does not make you believe we are united in any way. I flew with one guy who said of the junior guys “f£#k them, they can do the !!!!, I have been here longer than them and deserve to choose” chuckles “I bid for weekends off even when I have nothing to do just so they don’t get them”. Honestly he made my blood boil.

A lot of good points well made, though since Buter (and even I thick old me could work out who he was BTW) is one of the new “intake” to the BACC I’d certainly hope criticism at what and who went before isn’t aimed at him personally....no pressure there on the new guys to deliver...no, none at all.....! !!

That’s certainly very unfortunate but I’ll make the observation that from the lofty heights it has always been kind of hard to understand the enthusiasm some junior colleagues have for JSS... I think if and when JSS gets sorted and once the senior pilots have got their heads around the bidding logic the Junior pilots could quite possibly be shafted vs. how they fared under Bidline...but it certainly isn’t a laughing or chuckling matter... ( and no, I didn’t vote for it).

BTW personally with kids no longer at home like quite a few senior guys I’m quite happy to work weekends ..these days it’s not when I work, it’s where I go.

Hi Bex,
i don't mean to sound harsh but I can’t let that go.
You ask how BA can pay different salaries for the same job. You say shake up, but not to cut the pay of guys at the top.
You infer your union doesn’t represent some ( you?) but with impossible requirements like that, is there any wonder?
I don’t mean to be disrespectful but this forum is to help those looking for jobs. Your views are heartfelt and honest but need to be taken in context to give balance.
For those who haven’t read through all 263 pages here Bex if I remember previous postings correctly joined BA with the bmi takeover so didn’t apply to BA but through no fault of his own ended up here. . He is a junior SH capt. He’s made no secret of not being happy in BA. That in itself is good evidence as to whether BA is a good place to be or not. Bex has also made no secret of looking for other jobs but as far as I can n tell he’s still with BA. That’s good evidence too.
The low pay for junior A320 capts is a quirk but we have high pay for senior P2s. BA has historically worked on a longevity pay system. Whatever the pros and cons it’s what we have. Changing it will be v complex and will probably blow BA BALPA apart.
I don’t see how BA can be expected to “shake up” and level the pay without reducing the higher payscales for both P1 and P2. P1 SH would go senior and P2 LH would go junior. It would only be fair for senior P2s to have a bid for P1 SH but what do they do when all slots are filled? Should more junior P1s be forced into the RHS ? What other option would be fair? Ironically Bex wouldn’t see his bumper pay rise, just a type and seat change. BA would expect that to be nil cost so take the conversion course costs out of the pay budget. Oh and hold recruitment we will have so many internal moves and command courses the training system can’t cope.
And that hopefully brings it back onto recruitment.
One thing often overlooked is that a PP15 P2 when taking a command becomes a PP15 capt. In many airlines you drop to PP1 capt.

Sudden Twang. It does not sound harsh to be honest. I have on balance said BA is a good place to work but it’s really really crap at the bottom. It seems to be a company where the employees are only increasing the seniority gradient. Don’t get me wrong there is a place for it, but when it negatively impacts to such an extent on day to day life I don’t think that is right. The pay problem (first world problem agreed) for P1 is something that is not the fault of BA or the union because as you say normally you went in at PP15. With the improved conditions elsewhere the opportunity to address this should be considered. SFO’s on long haul? well I guess like all of us they have a bid next year too. It would be up to them. For the record though a friend of mine is LH part time and his take home exceeds mine (sometimes he does overtime) on full time and he would not ever come back to SH.

For those considering BA a good point was raised. Why have I not left? There are a few factors and primarily that is hope. Hope that it will get better, hope that JSS would improve things, the possibility to change fleets, the options of part time. The overriding factor though is I don’t really want to leave. I like BA, I like where I live but it is a real strain on family and relationships. There is no hiding from it and I always point to rostering.

Re reading the above I should have just said “what has BA ever done for us?” My wife is right I can be a grumpy git 😂