Colleague offered LH hold pool or A320 with April start date.He has taken320,good move.
First quarter seems to be LH,second quarter SH as 320 in house released to LH

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Answer ... Probably not ....

Apparently there's a big recurring whinge going on about the credited hour system making you work far harder in the month in which you have leave, than even in a fully screwed up JSS month. Then they ask to buy back your leave for peanuts and apparently the leave doesn't get replaced either. Counter productive and oppressive, or what ?

BigQ - "Where's the regulator on this ?" - UsualA - "Sunk with the Belgrano. " ;)

Referring back to my post #6695 some ten pages ago,

Our LH Pub Mole tried to explain but in between laughing, crying and spilling his beer, the only bit that made sense was ....

If you're part time you will be cheated out of two or three free days each month. Your part time days will start the day after your last trip. You will lose the industrial rest days (usually two for longhaul) that ordinarily follow the trip. You will therefore become available to work again, two days earlier than a full time pilot.

Part timers are thus working harder pro-rata than their full time mates. This doesn't happen in VS.

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Thanks, hope to hear soon.

I've heard of people at my outfit being offered 320, "take it or leave it".

The two I know of are both leaving it.

How old are they though? If they’re less than 30 and their true endgame is BA long haul then imho it’s a foolish decision. Their seniority will jump far quicker on SH as opposed to being endlessly junior as a LH pilot doing six low credit crap trips missing virtually an entire week of sleep in the calendar month.

I'll believe that when I see it.

You have a short time window to accept or decline then they just contact next on the pool list.
Many people going down to MSL 3750 coming out of SH freeze and release for aspirational LH bid.
350 fleet will have nine aircraft end 2020.

Is it anticipated for there to be another hiring phase at some point this year?

I believe at the sim check the assessor has a ‘suitable for long haul’ field to tick or not, which might explain why some get offered a choice and some don’t.

Also known as the “what type rating is on their licence” field. It’s utter nonsense. The BA sim has always been about being able to demonstrate the ability to pass a Type Rating on a Long Haul fleet.

Not anymore. The BA sim is now about whether or not they think you should go into the A320 only hold pool or the LH hold pool and it depended on your performance in the sim and total experience levels, but not type rating. This was said to me explicitly during my sim check last summer.

I was told this directly by someone carrying out the interviews so would be surprised if they were lying. How else do they decide to offer some the choice of LH/SH and some SH only?

No I’m not disputing what you’re saying it’s absolutely correct, it’s a recent “change”. My cynical mind is just suspecting that it’s being used as a convenient tool to be able to coerce someone into taking a SH position by making it look as though that candidate has somehow failed to make “the grade” for long haul. The truth is that the BA sim has always been pass/fail with a long haul conversion in mind so have they suddenly dropped the standard?

It’s also a complete nonsense from the POV that, other than your seniority number, there is no further assessment from inside the company to “Long Haul Suitability” once the engagement freeze is over so someone who has five years of SH behind them when doing the BA sim but assessed as “unsuitable for long haul” isn’t really going to be any significantly more or less suitable after another five years. So as I say it’s a convenient tool for the company to get more people onto SH.

LH suitability is your ability to demonstrate effectively that you can operate the sim which in this case is 744 to a high standard.By this I mean close to LPC standard.It used to be 2000hrs but the process has evolved.
The assessor has to ask himself will the candidate be able to cope with maybe just two or three landings a month with extremes of weather possible.If in doubt revert to SH until they have built up enough competency to cope with the aforementioned scenario.

Pretty much as I saw it. In fact in the sim brief the instructor asked what rumours we had heard about the session. To clear it up he said you have to prove you will not be a financial liability to BA and pass the TR and line training without fuss. Secondly, do you have the ability to handle a heavy off the bat (based on virtually no candidate arrives with 747 experience). If you check the LH box your hold pool says hold pool, if you don't it says A320 hold pool (apparently).

I can maybe add a bit to this...I was told by a member of the HR team that I’d had the suitable for LH box ticked but, due to my low total hours (around 600 at the time of the assessment, LH wasn’t an option at this stage.

Did you get a start date at all?

I got A320 starting April. Not typed and in the pool since Sept.

Yes I have a start date now - was swimming for around 7 months in total.

Whilst I am unaware of the criteria that are used to determine if they can shorten a type rating course based on previous experience, those with widebody experience will probably be earmarked for a widebody type from the outset. This would reduce the availability of widebody courses for those without experience and who may be hoping for a course.