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.

However nobody got granted a transfer onto a Aspirational Part Time as a result of the latest run ,( due to pressures on recruitment and training,) and it will be interesting to see how many bids for Right to Request get approved given the current climate.

One look at the relevant place on Yammer :ooh: shows that a few of the late 1980’s DEPs are starting to shuffle off, plus rumours of resignations from the bottom of the list so who knows what the requirement will be? ..I suspect there will be a few hundred a year for the foreseeable future, Finance allowing. In terms of joining BA and then moving rapidly up the seniority list it is worth bearing in mind that although the senior old g**** are thinning out there are a lot of the early Cadets (late 80 entry dates onwards) with maybe a decade to go sitting at or near the top of the lists...

Hi everyone,

quick question - as a new joiner with low seniority at Heathrow, how hard would it be to get mainly day trips? I don’t mind doing 4 sector days etc (if these exist) but I live nearby and don’t commute as such.

Thanks

If you accept (which you won’t have much choice in anyway) the low credit stuff, ie “short” day trips NCE, TXL, PRG, BLQ, BCN etc it will be fairly easy. You can set minimal night stops as a bid and it should work for you, I know a couple of people who do exactly that. As above, swapping is relatively easy anyway.

Okay, thank you. And once you’ve got some decent seniority - you at able to get high credit day trips too?

thanks

Ask me again in a few years !

In a nutshell yes. Or you can be more flexible with day off requests, or you can bid for the longer layovers, or you can bid for the nice destinations with decent hotel, or you can bid for the trips with only one operating sector back, or, or...

Hi Safety, well done and welcome

Roster, you bid placing types of trips in a order of preference. There are loads of options but to keep it simple if you want trips you say I want trips 2-4 days. If you don’t mind day trips you say, I’ll have these too but I prefer trips.....it’s way more complicated but you will get a 1052 page brief guide to it.

Day trips, yes but probably the lower credit 4:30 stuff and early and weekends. Trips, yes but again probably the 2 day 6. You may see some 3 or 4 days trips but they tend to be more desirable unless they slam 4 sectors in day 2 and 3. Max trip length is 5 days.

Overtime. Providing you are above CAP....remember that first statement. You can pick up any available work via our online system. You can also trade trips for others you prefer, subject to the rules. If you pick up a overtime trip and you are over CAP you will be paid at your bidline rate x 1.2 for the trip.....yes a amazing 20% extra! If that trip is 4:30 credit (min credit per day) you will get 4.5 x your hourly rate at the premium of 1.2

Example you pick up a BCN it’s 4:30 and your rate is £60, you will get £324 plus flight pay and duty pay before tax. The fact it’s 7 hours duty seems to be missed on BA.

Rosters are busier in the summer than the winter but it is never really slack. I did roughly 800hrs and 185 days work last year. Busiest month was 18days.......actually an improvement over the old system for me.

Yeah it’s 1.25

TASS, you need to have discharged your TASS by picking up work or have the TASS as time expired before you pick up any work. If you don’t do that you just offset the TASS without any overtime pay.

FO’s do squeeze in overtime but their rosters are constant 6 on 1 off 5 on 2 off kind of deal. Overtime is really not very appealing but Wiggy sums it up nicely.

Just to answer the question in slightly simpler terms (CAP, credit, TASS and NCP are not things anybody outside of BA will understand)...

- S/H has tours of up to 5 days; each month you can bid for the work you want and even at the bottom of the seniority list achieve plenty of 2,3 and 4 day trips. However, work on having at least a couple of day trips every month. If you don’t live within easy driving distance you will need accommodation of some sort near LHR a few nights every month between trips.

- LGW is different, mostly day trips for everybody. You need to live within easy commuting distance.

- Overtime is available; at LHR it is all electronic...log in to the online rostering system, if you see a trip which fits on your line legally then you can pick it up and generally be paid overtime for it. I say generally, because there are a few health warnings to go with it; complicated, but essentially if you didn’t already have your full monthly work commitment on your roster then additional work just plugs the gap and doesn’t get paid as overtime. Best understood (sadly) by getting it wrong in your early days - the system has lots of intricacies and catches out the most experienced guys. Top tip - once training complete, chat to skippers over a beer down route and you’ll pick it up gradually! The value of the trip depends on numerous factors, but largely how many flying hours it contains and what your paypoint is.

- Overtime at LGW is not electronic. You can ring up to volunteer days in advance, or alternatively wait for desperate text messages for uncovered work on the day and then ring up. FOs get paid a flat rate of £514.33 per day (before tax), two days payable if the trip goes over midnight so can be very lucrative for an easy 2-sector late.

I hope that helps to give a broad overview - I would stress once again that the bidding system is complicated and best learned about gradually once line training finished!

Yup - 75% of Captain’s Rest Day Working (was 50%, increased some time in 2019 apparently to stop the growing trend for ‘haggling’ with Current Ops when they were desperate).

Note - rate quoted is the 2020 figure taking the pay rise in to account, and to be clear this is the ‘overtime’ (‘Rest Day Working’) payment applicable to LGW S/H pilots.

Sounds horrendous!!
At what point do you drop from exhaustion??
Safe??

I’ve been on the Airbus over 4 years at BA and have never had a roster like that. Certainly 6 on, but not 3 days off in 14.

It’s the guys picking up overtime that have rosters like that through choice. I was shocked when I saw it too.

My apologies, I missed that part. Yea, some of the rosters out there are crazy, but if those guys are making some extra dollar then who am I to judge. Not for me personally though.