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.