The information and feedback on the DEP threads are very accurate. The approach I took was to take the time to read the threads, open a word document and copy/paste all relevant information into one place. The new computer test is the only part of Day one that can not be practised.

BALPA were well and truly beaten by the company during Openskies, back when they had both a strong pilot mandate and rock solid legal advice. Despite the union's protestations that they are impotent because the pilots are not united, this is in my opinion just spin to keep people paying their subscriptions. My first fifteen years have seen BALPA negotiate 'clever' deals that turn out to be worse than what the company were asking for in the first place. I expect the next fifteen to be no different. In my opinion, we'd achieve exactly the same result if the company simply asked for some volunteers to form a pilot negotiaton/communicaton body, and gave them credit for their non-flying duties.

Please consider your expectations managed.

GS

There's a risk of continuing the drift but nevertheless I think this is worth briefly persuing on this recruitment thread since I've seen optimistic claims elsewhere about why people should join BA because of BALPA's strong influence on the company.

TBH at a strategic level (often at company council and certainly above) these days I think BALPA in all it's forms is struggling to counter the lobbying power/spend of the industry. OTOH a local level I've always found most of the individual reps in BA to be very very good at helping sorting out difficulties, even if it means ruffling a few feathers with those in the office.

Re Openskies

As I heard it that was the nub of BALPAs problem. they thought they had - it turned out they didn't, but we never found out all the gory details.

Looking from the outside in, I think I somewhat agree with wiggy.

EASA FTL's got onto the statute book because of the significant airline lobby. Airline managements across Europe are exploiting the legislative landscape to their advantage knowing it will be years before even a concerted Union lobby will "catch up" so to speak.

There certainly doesn't look like there needs to be a prohibition on swapping fleets in BA, especially when the economics of the swap make sense, but that "luxury" seems to me, just that, a "luxury".

One hopes that regardless of any dashed personal expectations (I always thought Senior SH BA pilots could pretty much generate a LH lifestyle via bidding anyway - although being a LH pilot myself, I honestly don't really understand the lure of the LH lifestyle!), BA pilots stick together, as they're a far more potent force within the industry when they stand united.

Thanks to BALPAs weakness or perhaps because it suits certain commuters within the BACC, bidding has been neutered within BA. Even the most senior are affected by this and the days of being able to bid for what you like and avoiding the stuff you don't have ended. Still, on the bright side, it may persuade some not to stay until they die in harness, there maybe more churn soon.

Sounds like the bidline system has changed. Could anyone inthe know share a recent a320 roster?

Thanks

nick

At the risk of repetition ... yes indeed, whether that's for good or bad depends on your POV.

If you (or anybody else for that matter) starts hearing tales from someone on the joys of Bidline ask them when they last worked as BA Flight Crew. If it's longer ago than the end of '14 than frankly you're probably better off politely ignoring the input.

(but sorry, can't help with the roster but FWIW a final roster in isolation, in itself, might not tell the whole story, you'd need to see the road travelled.....).

I don't think its the lure of LH that has got many wanting to escape SH but the changes to SH making life really hard. I was away from home for 90 duty hours a week in March. Many are saying the only way to survive SH is to go part time.

You know it's bad when guys in the LHS A320 are considering a bid back to RHS on a LH fleet. The roster I saw for a junior P1 is horrible. 10 days off in a month and a line full of poor credit trips and 4 sector days. A junior P2 is not much better. Then you look at a 777 line with heavy crew and three trips in a month with 15 days off a month.............grass is always greener and all that but since SH got stuffed it's only a matter of time before LH gets it too.

I have no issues staying on the SH fleet but I don't feel I pilot should be made to feel he has little or no choice but to bid off based on the wide gulf in lifestyle between the two.

Thanks to all the guys in the know who've posted on this so far. Could anyone outline in a bit more detail the extent of the recent changes to bidline? Can you still bid for a line of work or has that facility now been completely removed for more generic bidding options such as earlies/mids/lates/overnights/day trips etc. Cheers in advance:ok:

Wiggy

I believe that is indeed correct. The problem now is that no matter how much money BALPA throw at their legal advice, they will never trust that it is rock solid and therefore they will never again challenge BA head on. All they can do is tweak agreements to the extent that the company allows them to. Any negotiating body could do that. On a local level; one of my friends was sacked for something he did not do. He was a BALPA member and received very poor advice from the union which ultimately cost an innocent man his job.

You can still bid for lines of work and they are awarded based on seniority. If you are in the bottom 25% then forget it you are on blind lines. Over three years in and since the temporary but now permanent changes came in it's been blind lines for 9 months in a row now.

You can trade trips still but there are now so many restrictions it is very difficult to actually trade without the computer saying no because it's a code L, or a closed day or my personal favourite because there are more than -1 uncovered trips. I am still waiting for the no because there is a y in the day requested.

Since we changed from flying pay to a fixed flight pay allowance CAP has increased substantially. If you do get a trip line you can now be force assigned extra work even if you are above CAP. That Friday you wanted off and got.....na only kidding here is a day trip.

I have flown for three airlines and this one is by far the most demanding of your time. Would I have joined with the benefit of what I know now.......probably not no.

You can, but now even if you get a line and have hit or exceeded the monthly per capita target the company have the right, prior to the rosters becoming final, of dropping an extra trip(s) onto your line if there is space available, or even re-jigging your line to make space available for an extra trip..I think this months celebrated case is a long haul guy who had well over 90 hours credit on his line and then still had an extra trip dropped onto his roster...right in the space he'd tried to keep free by working harder in the rest of the month....

in short the downside now is that outside of leave you have zero solid control over days off until final rosters are published. OTOH the management can no longer ring you up on an off day or meet you at the aircraft side and hit you with an extra trip at very short notice.

Wow! Please show me those where you can also achieve CAP that doesn't involve a 9 day LHR-SIN-SYD-SIN-LHR! I must be missing them! ;)

It is very hard on SH at the moment. The letter passed around the company last week alluded to the slim possibility that, maybe, perhaps, possibly management got the crewing levels wrong last summer. Either that or we all went sick over the weekend 'spikes' as 'da management' like to call them.

Hopefully the recruiting will allow top end movement and a bit more of a breather on the line without the need for management to fudge, nudge and cajole the figures to avoid a CAP over run.

Time will tell. :-) Interestingly there is almost zero interest from the RHS LH for applying for LHS SH. Odd that isn't it. :}

Ok hands up perhaps we were guilty of finding a plumb line but I assure you yesterday when bitching about it we looked on Ibid and compared two random lines. 3 trips, at CAP and 15 days off. Either way it kicks the arse out of multi sector days, day trips and 10 days off in a month. What really grates now is the 7am pick up on a domestic to shuttle down to LHR to then have to sit about for three hours before your next link. This has started to become quite common since EASA FTL's

Next you will be saying the cheese board has been removed

I was assigned LHR Airbus last week starting at the end of July. I have heard of one 747 course too, although I don't know of anyone personally that's been offered it.

A320.......Long haul slots could come up but we need to see how the manpower plan shapes up. That's the actual words from LC. 220 pilots have been offered places with a requirement of 311

What? No more changes of roster after publication? Incredible - well done the BALPA reps!

Yep by screwing up Bidline so that you are now essentially rostered rather than have any real bidding rights, forced draft is no more. In my 14 years at BA I have never been forced drafted but I have used bidding to create a relatively comfortable set of rosters. That ability is gone now and Bidline is dead. The current BACC will be remembered as the ones that failed to defend BLRs and were partners, with BA in supervising the end of BLRs.

Well done the BALPAS reps! - yeah, right.

And how long do you think that was going to last - welcome to the real world. Anyway, you are over-reacting - no ability to have some control over your work at all - really?

Perhaps a less emotive description of the changes would be that under "old" Bidline you had a high degree of control over days off, and the more senior you were, the more control you had. Yes, there was the chance of being "drafted" at short notice but there were legitimate ways of constructing your roster to protect specific days. Under Bidline as it works today you have much less control. I think the major bone of contention for many is that you can be over the monthly CAP and the company can still stick extra work on the line and/or they can shuffle trips around to generate a gap to drop work into....I'm not sure I'd describe that as "welcome to the real world", I'd described it as being stuffed.....:\

That said there is indeed still some degree of control. There's still the protection of non assignable days such as leave, and as a back stop the possibility of swoping a trip with a colleague to generate a gap where you need it, however that is becoming increasingly problematic due to everybody's workload and will become even more difficult under EASA.

Ultimately if you join BA in the knowledge that in a month with no non-assignable days (e.g. leave, Duty Free week) you have no guaranteed choice or clarity as to your days off until final rosters are published you'll handle it fine.

...and that's all I want to say about that...:p