This flow rate restriction does not really exist, other than that overall training footprint (and cost) increases if you make everyone have to do an additional course in order to obtain a long haul command. And there’s the reason why it has not already been enforced - money.

I am actually surprised the company went for increasing pay for existing short haul captains as well as new. Far cheaper to just give golden handshakes to new short haul captains from now on (payable over four years or some other timescale). That particular point was a win from BALPA as far as I can see. The problem was that all other pilots were receiving a pittance.

So rather than an obvious impossibility what we have here is a desire/assumption by interested parties that it will not happen. From experience I would say don’t count on it, all you need is an eager new manager and a disjointed workforce and pilots will be directed to where the company need them to be.

Not even close. Suffice to say we will be waiting quite a while for that one!

We haven't even gotten the results of a survey we filled out nearly a month ago. So far all BALPA have said of it is that we apparently liked PCS more than we realised!

I’m also hearing on the line that long-haul commands could come down to 15/16 years (with said expansion and retirements) - tempting those considering a SH command to wait a little longer in the LH RHS.. (increasingly so, like me), compounding current issues even further.

Long haul commands are already at 15 years!
People who joined in 2011 have ok bids for this year on the 777

Like I keep saying elsewhere, this will not be linear. Some people will get commands at 15 years but the big problem the optimists are overlooking is the sheer number of people recruited between 2014 and the back end of 2016. Between the start of that recruitment wave and my join date for instance are ~500 places. That’s around five years worth of long haul commands in the space of about 18 months recruitment. Great for the people at the start of the wave but if you were unlucky enough to miss that, which is most people, you will be waiting slightly less but still in the region of 17/18 years minimum.

The company weren’t really paying for that at all. Hardly any of the increased money for the lower end of the payscales was new money (you try getting any kind of real answer out of Balpa as to the amount of new money BA were contributing to this PCS restructure).

In fact it was being taken from the PP34 SFOs by reducing their pension and locking them in to a freeze at a lower paypoint than their current Ts & Cs allowed. A point missed by the Balpa cheerleaders (funnily enough low to middle paypoint C32Ls) on the forums who whinged and moaned about being denied their £20k payrise conveniently forgetting not only was that money coming from some of their colleagues but those same colleagues actually were the ones who had allowed them to get command at a lower seniority than they should have had by them not bidding for C32L in the first place!

Is that separate to the BMI joiners?

Yes. Colleague of mine on the 380 joined 2011 had an OK bid, subsequently changed to him dropping out of it but looks like he’ll probably get a course this year, if not he’ll get it beginning of ‘27.

BMI joined the year after, coinciding with the end of PP24. Will be interesting to see how many bid for Long Haul as the majority will be getting on in age now and in a decent enough place seniority wise on SH.

After that you then get into the big wave of 2014-16.