Thanks for the response!

I think if TUI came knocking it would be hard to turn them down vs VAA, again I'm just nervous about the financial position of TUI, whether that be justifiably or not. Knocked off the throne by Jet2, the sole charter airline still going, still making losses since pandemic (who isn't!), a large boom in hiring, especially lower hour pilots which on the face of it is seems good, but all seemingly on these full time yet part time contracts, which doesn't scream 'we can afford to hire full time crew'., something doesn't sit right with any of the options (if I were to have them). IMO the safest jobs are either BA, Ryanair or Jet2.

I feel like I've become a pessimist in looking for a reasons to doubt in every company, Dammit!!

no job is ever 100% safe. Jet2 certainly are not in that bracket, do not get distracted by the aggressive expansion and bright shiny adverts. You need to be clear what you want from a job for your home situation, forget the flying side of things. That will wear thin after 2 mins unless you are a keen bean. Furthermore it won’t matter unless you’re happy with what the airline gives you. Good luck.

TUI have always had a winter summer imbalance. It was also a Last Choice trick of hiring permanent-part-year. In the past the imbalance had been smoothed by detachments: Scandianavia, Canada.

I’m not sure what the latest is, but the Canada contract is/ has ended. The, recently stepped down DFO, was trying to use that as stick.

TUI was good, the crew 99% brilliant. VS doesn’t sound like a particularly happy ship, but that’s only from a couple of people I know there. VS were brutal over covid, TUI didn’t make any redundancies.

I’m not trying to Shi# stir , but a friend of mine in the company said that potential strike action is on the cards ?
me being nosey wanted to see if this is the case ?

FTA process currently between the CC and management, indicative ballots on potential future action are always part of that process to provide leverage for the union. It's good to see though that union membership has recovered, indeed it's stronger than it has ever historically been at VS, and that the CC are fighting hard to get back to pre-covid Ts&Cs.It's a long game though and as always, management don't like spending money....

Couple of questions about working for Virgin:

1. What is the % union membership at the moment?
2. What is the union fighting for? reduced hours, Increase pay or also other issues?
3. What is the Check and training culture like in the company?
4. What are some of the major issues facing the pilots at this time?
5. How many people are leaving or looking to leave? Where are they going?

1. Good, at a historical high (VS pilots had been split across 2 unions in the past) and improving all the time. Actual numbers/% are confidential, for reasons of industrial strategy.
2. Yes. But the current FTA is about lifestyle protections, some of which were given up for Covid but not yet restored, and introducing others to mitigate fatigue/improve sustainability away from the covid-survival-mode of 2020-2022.
3. Subjective, but overall positive in my experience, and certainly light years away from the bad old days; significant focus on training and development, and extra support is always there if needed in LIFUS/CMD etc. No ‘chop’ culture and no tw@ts in training that I’ve come across - mates on the other fleet tend to confirm the same there.
4. See 2.
5. Confidential; management won’t say (except to say ‘not very many’) and it’s just anecdotal on the pilot side. A few have gone to the ME, and as always pilots are full of talk, but in my peer group numbers leaving seem small. People always have different reasons for leaving, especially when lots of recruiting is going on elsewhere; more often than not it’s the pull rather than the push (ME salary, Jet2 northern bases etc).

Good inside info, thanks a lot! Much appreciated.

Is the union trying to get the 750 hour limit back?

A return to a credit hours system is on the wishlist but not in danger of happening soon. Crewing are moving to AIMS next month which promises some better rostering functionality in future, but no-one’s counting chickens just yet. That said, I’ve never done more than 700hrs in a year on the post-covid 900hrs contract, and that’s with extra trips/working days off.

Different fleets, different beats. My logbook app hasn't shown less that 850 in 12 since October last year and is frequently >890. With no extra trips worked

RARA9 - Our virgin mate in the pub last friday said big balpa recently shut down the individual company councils 'bulletin board' forum's that members regularly used to exchange rants views and knowledge. Replaced by some useless disorganised twitter-type can-of-worms nonsense. He says posts can be removed by nameless mods, without trace or explanation, but its difficult to be sure when you can't find anything anyway.

Some half-baked reasons given but widely believed, especially by the BA members, that it was because the forums were being used to express public criticism of the NEC. No forums = no criticism = rosy garden. Management heaven.

As a result, angry members are resorting to private whatsapp groups to vent their anger express their views.

He said it is difficult to know what is going on unless you are in a group but they tend to be one-fleet ponies. A bonus is - you can be in a group without being in balpa.

In his view, the upcoming rumpus at VS should include pay, intolerable scheduling and use of inexperienced second officer cruise pilots to fiddle the FTLs. But a very long way off a strike ..... especially if you were around in 2011, or looking over the fence at BA in 2018.

LFH

The BALPA comms revamp has been really badly handled by the NEC. Possibly for the reasons you suggest, however the old VS forums are still working, it’s just the BA ones and the ‘general discussion’ boards that have closed. New website is crap though.

0/0 yeah I hear you. My 700hrs is all 2-pilot/no crew rest, and 4-5 trips a month (guess the fleet ;) ). So fewer hours but still flat out, maybe just (slightly) shorter flights perhaps.

a few more questions please:

-What’s the best fleet to be on in Virgin right now if you want days off?
-How long of a wait for lifestyle rosters on that fleet

Can’t see typical rosters for every fleet but it’s a rostered-days-per-year airline now, not target-hrs-per-year as per pre-covid, so days off seem roughly the same everywhere. You now get blocks of standby or rsv if you are rostered up to your hours target, unlike the old days when you got extra days off. One of the reasons VACC is advocating a return to a credit hours system, but company not enthusiastic, unsurprisingly.

Lifestyle contracts - expect to wait years. Hints that they’ll ask for expressions of interest again sometime in 2024, but no other timescale offered.

Thank you the info, very helpful.

Ok, this is interesting.. You're required to do online courses prior to your employment with Virgin. Unpaid? Very odd.

I see virgin have reopened hiring and this time open to EU citizens with visa sponsorship. UK citizens are at a huge disadvantage on the job market if more UK airlines start to do this because I can't see any European carrier doing it.

But only for Boeing. Seems quite odd. Quite agree though UK first!

At least they've got blue passports :ok:

Can anyone tell me how commutable the FO roster is? Airbus rated, so likely I'd end up in Airbus fleet? Also if you do happen to live outside the UK, are your various insurances only valid if living in the UK?

Finally, is c.£86,000 about right all in for a SFO?

Anecdotally, from a friend, living in Europe, he is struggling with the commute with just two days between trips sometimes, and looking to leave, having been on the 787 in VA for only about nine months. Not sure if this is the norm, or just bad luck?

Mate of mine has aged horribly in the last five years since he started commuting having joined VS. Trip two days off trip two days cycle ad Infinitum. This is 330/350 fleet. Doesn’t sound like much fun.

how far is his commute?

Eastern Europe.

Welcome to virgin 2.0
 

yes that the norm now. Everyone is permanently tired.

I appreciate there’s reciprocal traffic, but definitely a few VA guys left for Jet2 recently, citing fatigue/lifestyle and company attitude as the main issues. Some even within a year of command. Says it all really.

Not just Jet2, I hear it more and more that people are looking outside. Even a few newly promoted Captains are fed up and looking for DEC outside.

I’ve got 7 years to retirement and to be fair if the ex wife hadn’t left me with a mortgage at my age I’d have taken the payoff in 2020.

The problem with Virgin is we have a lot of selfish crew that will grab any overtime they can to line their pockets without thinking of the consequences to crewing levels.. and it’s not the happy friendly place it was when I joined back in the 00’s where people would help out each other.

BALPA like to trot out this ethos at the big orange too, where attrition rate is very high. The individual pilots can’t really be blamed for wanting a bit of extra dinero with the cost of the world. If people are using their fatigue mitigation tools then the message should be out there for the company to see it’s not working. Surely at five trips a month there’s no scope for picking up any overtime at all, so which super-humans are actually picking this stuff up?

Virgin seem to be recruiting for courses into 2024 so one would expect that people picking up overtime isn’t cutting the numbers too much?

Lets just hope the golden three comes good.

You want know what happens when pilots don't take that DOP for overtime? The overtime payment usually goes up, thus enticing more pilots to say yes. Eventually, even the goody-two-shoes ones accept. Failing that, the Airline cancels flights, which results in EU261 claims and probably the end of your job. Airlines would much rather offer DOPs than hire 25% more pilots. That's a lot of redundancy payouts for when the next (delete as appropriate) pandemic,terrorist attack,financial crash,volcanic eruption occurs.

You would think so, but some months people are getting 5 trips the next 3.. I flew with someone the other week that had picked up two extra flights each month for the last 6 month with out burning his leave.

I see Virgin pilots have overwhelmingly voted yes in an indicative ballot for discontinuous strike action over the changes imposed on them and their work practices after covid.

Good luck to Virgin pilots. It’s time management started listening to the very real concerns re fatigue and a work life balance.

Utter garbage. You want people to stop doing overtime, get your union to ban it through collective action. Going after individuals for doing overtime at their agreed rate in line with their contract is what’s selfish.

Based on your retirement age, my guess is you don’t have student debt weighing you down, training loans to repay, fledgling kids at home etc. You do you, don’t throw stones at over people.

Nothing quite as laughable as someone near the top of their payscale and seniority list hammering junior pilots for stuff like that.

Quite right. And you do you. Feast on the last sumptious scraps in your Westwood robes while Rome burns around you. Throwing stones at the generation that fought hard for the rights you are throwing away is real garbage. Or rubbish as we say outside Delta.

Are there really so few UK pilots applying for these jobs that they feel the need to sponsor visas for EU applicants?

people have VERY short memory’s , the way Virgin and other certain airlines treated pilots during covid was terrible , I’m sure that amongst other reasons is a factor.
I feel if lots of airlines start getting cheap labour from Europe into uk airlines it will not end well for us ….

We urgently need to get a handle on this as pilots through whichever means. There needs to be a way of ascertaining when an airline has a right to hire foreign/cheap labour. They can pull the wool over the UK governments eyes by saying there is a pilot shortage, all-the-while not even increasing salaries by 5%.

Virgin has about 40 aircraft in its fleet right now. How many pilots does it have?

Believe it or not, it's not down to Virgin to decide if they're allowed to hire non-UK citizens. That falls on the government, who currently require non-UK airline pilots to be paid £50,800 in order to satisfy a sponsored visa, which is a good chunk less than what the FO year one is at VS. Ultimately, who cares where the applicants come from? Variety in life and flying experience is a good thing. It's up to BALPA to actually negotiate a decent QOL for the flight crew they represent.

Everyone who is a UK passport holder and has a basic grasp of how labour supply affects wages maybe?

You think all the UAE nationals are up in arms because they let outsiders in? EK still one of the best paid gigs around if you can face it.

Every single industry in the UK allows foreign nationals to obtain sponsorship if they have the right skills and salary, but it’s quite a lot of effort for the companies involved to do, so most are put off from doing so.

To keep it Virgin relevant, BALPA’s crusade at the moment is for more days off, longer rest periods and more pilots operating on longer flights, which can all be achieved much easier in an expanding airline with more pilots in the company. Even BA (supposedly the be all and end all of British aviation) is struggling to find qualified pilots to fill their ranks, so outside of your xenophobia you can’t blame them for looking down a different path to fill the spots. Take it up with the government.

Interesting you mention the UAE, given its clear and overt bias in favouring nationals over immigrants in the labour market there (Emiratisation). You are correct at least in pointing out that the problem lies with the UK government for its complicity in allowing the undercutting of locals.

I don't blame Virgin for acting in its own interests to try and suppress labour costs but suspect (and hope) that thanks to regulatory divergence from EASA their search for UK licenced foreigners will be largely fruitless.

15 years ago, US pilots were sleeping in crash pads and cars parked at the end of the runway. It has always been a mostly closed labour market there and now it's staring to bite. Look at the situation there today. Do you think such wages would exist if the whole world was eligible for E-3 visas?

Opening to the world will only serve to jeopardise any serious rise in T&C's in the UK and must be opposed vehemently.