At ba they have 2 ways to change your roster... both have to be due to cancellation or substitution (leasing another airline to do the flight) - it can't be just at the company's whim.

If flight canceled 2 days out or more you become "assignable" over the footprint of the original trip and they can give you (with 2 days notice) anything they like and you have to do it. Can come back any time on the original landing day. No payment unless the new trip is higher credit.

If within 2 days there's a new thing called "reuse" whereby they can change you around but you have to be back within 3hrs from the original finish time. There is an extra payment if they do this.

I'm longhaul and probably get made assignable once or twice a year... invariably they put a JFK over the assignable days. But I've never been "reused", my guess is that's much more common on SH.

Does anyone have an example of an FO's usual 777 or 787 roster at low seniority? I heard they are being worked hard and get the worse trips but was wondering as a new FO on those fleets what destinations could be reasonably expected from bids?

I'm working particularly hard over July/August - YYZx3 JFKx2 POSx2 LAXx1 TPAx1 YVRx1 GIGx1. Mostly 2 days off between trips but couple of 3 days off. I'm above cap so putting around 15hrs into my "bank" that I can either use to drop a trip (T&C apply!) or get paid out in cash.

Careful with anonymity giving up information like that, I’m pretty sure I’ve just identified you on ibid. ;-)

If you’re junior on LH you’d want to be on the 787 rather than the triple. A quick look at the bottom of the lists this month shows plenty of JFKs, EWRs & ORDs on the triple (all 2 crew, all knackering, with 2 days off between trips - which is of course perfectly legal and therefore acceptable). Repeat ad nauseam until fatigued and / or senior enough to avoid. Welcome to JSS. :rolleyes:

On the 78, lots of 3 crew trips make it to the bottom of the seniority list (SEA, PDX, IAH, MEX, BOM, DEL etc). As well as generally being higher credit they’re far less tiring, given the time in the bunk.

You don’t see many folk moving 787 to 777…

If anyone wants to pair up for sim prep in Cambridge on 19th July please PM me.

Thanks!

Could anyone at BA longhual currently explain how overtime works there with the whole credit system? And is it only available to people with high levels of seniority?

Anyone can do overtime. Your hourly rate goes up with the payscales so more senior pilots have a higher rate.

Basically 2 ways to do it.
1: Do a whole trip in days off, get paid 1.25 (sometimes 1.5x) for the trip credit. If full time on Longhaul, there's very little chance to fit a whole trip in your days off. You can choose to do overtime in your duty free week, wrap days and part time days. But not normally in annual leave days, and never in parental leave days.

2. Swap your trip for a longer one to get paid the difference in credit. Eg. I have a 15hr JFK trip. I swap it for a 21.5hr LAX trip. I get paid 6.5hrs overtime at 1.25x hourly rate for it.

Your allowances and flight pay are always simply the flying that you do - so you'd get more for a longer trip.

I personally do very very little overtime because I like roster stability for home life and don't want to work in my time off. But some guys live on it, and if you want to work all your time off, and are very flexible with which days you are away you can make decent extra cash.

Thanks for explaining. Seems a bit odd though, why would the company pay you x1.25, for doing the exact same trip someone else was originally scheduled to do for x1?

Most people I know in other industries get paid time and a half or double time for doing overtime because there needs to be some incentive to pick up the extra work.

NCP used to be a theoretically derived hourly rate of pay, which was then actually delinked (reduced) by being frozen for several years many years ago. These days, 1.25xNCP for a pp24 scale pilot is actually just a couple of percent higher than their normal rate of pay. This is why the company is finding itself needing to pay 1.5x and also offer buyback, in order to attract any volunteers. Whilst NCP was historically derived from the pp24 scales, it is the same rate for a pp34 pilot. So it is actually more lucrative percentage wise, for a pp34 pilot to do overtime than it is for a pp24.

The trip that you can pick up for overtime is an uncovered trip. So that pilot went sick, fatigued, needed a dependency day, went out of recency or maybe they swapped onto another uncovered trip leaving their original trip uncovered. Whatever happened it's now a trip that doesn't have a pilot, so the company needs to cover it.
The cheap way for them to cover it is assign a pilot on reserve or standby - that pilot doesn't get paid any overtime rate at all - but the company seems to want preserve operational resilience lately, by getting overtime volunteers first and saving the reserve pilots in case things get worse.

Really appreciate the insights!

what is a typical roster like for someone junior on longhual ? And is PP1 numbers advertised on there flyer realistic ?


kind regards

Search my previous replies on this thread for more detail but expect 5 trips average month on 777.

What's "there flyer?"

Direct entry pilot currently 71k basic salary at PP1. Increases 2.6k/PP LH or 2.0k/PP SH
Plus aound 20k flight pay and allowances.

Flight Pay and Allowances are closer to £30k than £20k nowadays, post pay deal and how busy we are. Pro rata I’m £27k for the year so far and I’ve had a couple of extremely (unusually) quiet reserve periods and a lot of leave (carried over from last year) so I would be on the low end I would imagine. However remember this is money that vanishes if you break your leg or some other equivalent misfortune befalls you.

Quite right Rex. Over the past year I've done 38 trips, 700hrs (bit of unpaid leave and got sick a couple of times). At todays pay rates would be £24.5k allowances for that year. More typically would be 45 trips or so, much closer to 30k.

It is possible to game the system if you’re agile. A few guys are full time or 75% part time and still managed to do 600 hours NCP overtime (and I’m not talking about the BALPA reps). Bearing in mind the annual limit is a rolling 900 hours, guys can use the system to their advantage. Admittedly, it isn’t common, and guys have to be on eMaestro 24/7 or have a hotline to Global Ops.

Is this level of flight pay possible to achieve on pp1 pay rates and are your time away from base allowance included in this sum and is this paid as a net figure from the payslip?

flight pay and Allowances are the same for all pay points and fleets, even LHS and RHS.

Yes time away from base is included, ive not made any deduction for downroute expenses.

My numbers are gross, though there is a non-taxable element which averages (for me) around 40% of my TAFB.

One thing to note is that short haul pilots at ba may have less TAFB because they spend more nights at home, and their non taxable portion will be lower as daytrips and domestic nightstops (I think) are fully taxed.

Thanks for the breakdown, just trying to get a good picture of what to expect at BA LH as I'm staring down a decision of BA LH or VS with there new contract.

Are the rumours regarding changes to the 34 pay point scale simply rumours or is there any substance in them?