Anyone been offered a 320 course recently?

Many, many commute from Scotland, especially given the frequency of flights from GLA/EDI and even NCL. Very common on both SH and LH.

SH you have the added advantage of being able to bid for GLA/EDI night stops for an extra night at home, or the occasional trip originating/terminating there (which would ordinarily have a deadhead sector to LHR).

Can anyone advise where A320 type rating training is held and for how long? Where do you do your base training?

The rumours I have heard, are that the driver for the pay negotiations has very little to do with wanting to attract more applicants.

Based on what was said at a recent assessment day, a lot of type ratings are being done with L3 at Gatwick with some conversion sims back at BA afterwards.

Possibly although I notice they’ve just extended both LH & SH recruitment for another month. They clearly aren’t getting the numbers they need.

Which sounds better on paper. In reality it’s more like stolen moments at home and can actually be more frustrating in its own way than being away from home for the duration of a block.

I would treat any potential pay negotiations with a huge dollop of salt. BA still has a huge industrial relations problem with its pilots it just doesn’t see the need to fix. They don’t want to pay us, simple as that. Our laughable bonus system negotiated this time around has the company needing to make something like a 16% margin just for us to get a measley couple of grand. As long as we have people doing overtime trips just for the allowances (yes this happens) they will not feel any need to remunerate more.

Sim
 

Hi all

How long did it take for you to get the sim results?
Did you get an email or phone call?

You might be making the assumption that a pay negotiation translates into a pay rise.

Hi everyone. Can anybody give me an indication on what a typical roster is like for a low seniority FO on the 777? Also in terms of annual leave, are there any months that are quite hard to get leave in? Is it possible to get a long block of leave in a row? 2-3 weeks for example. Many thanks in advance.

Have a look at my old posts on this thread but briefly an average full time month would be around 3x 3day trips plus 2x 4day trips. With either 2 or 3 days off between. Working most weekends.
Leave yes you can put your annual leave together to make a 2 week block which becomes 21 days with wrap days. Even longer is possible with duty free week or other tricks.

Hi WVD, many thanks for your reply. Are there any months where it would be nigh on impossible for a low seniority FO to get leave within?

Leave is allocated by a points system. Low points for popular times (xmas, summer holidays) through to high points for unpopular periods (eg november). Iirc the points aggregate over a rolling 8 years so in your first few years you'll not get much in peak times but after a while you've got just as much a shot as anyone else.

Thank you for the info. Also are LGW trips quite hard to bid for?

777 is probably the worst fleet to be on as a junior , even after a few years seniority it’s still pretty rubbish.

Definitely true for long haul where the demographic is a bit different but during my time on short haul I never failed to get peak summer leave right from the very beginning. I’m guessing because it was generally younger pilots without families in the main who were motivated to avoid going on leave when it’s school holidays or were trying to build points etc. Christmas was another story though.

Two words. Absolutely brutal. I’d try to sugarcoat it but anyone would tell you the exact same (as evidenced above). Best bet if you can afford it would be trying to get 75% straight off the bat.

There is also the ability to ask for parental leave during the year if you can’t get the leave that you wanted. As long as you get in early, or are prepared to be waitlisted until CAP set the month before, you usually get it. Normally, BA are more than happy to get a pesky pilot off the books for a few weeks , even during peak holiday months. I usually managed 2 weeks parental leave in July or Aug .

If you work overtime (more than 85 hours) in a month, are those hours banked so you can essentially drop trips in future months? How easy is it to drop a weekend shift for example?

Thanks for the information lads/lasses, eye opening information for sure.

Depending on the type of overtime it is either banked hours to drop trips later (this is if you are rostered above cap or swap for a higher credit trip with another pilot). Or it can be payable as cash (if you take a trip that the company needs someone for in your days off, or trade up to a longer trip then the difference is payable).

It used to be really difficult to drop a trip over a weekend though I've managed it. The system has recently improved a bit though, which should make it easier to drop trips.