Then you are doing something incredibly wrong. PP23 is around £180’000 basic. Which even with 6% going into your pension gives £8437 a month, according to listentotaxman. That’s a minimum, before adding flying pay and allowances, which could easily be an extra 1500-3000 depending on whether you do a lot of day trips or tours. How much is your taycan per month? Are you overpaying into your pension?

Skytest is pretty good, although I found the real test actually easier. Give it a few hours practice, but don't over do it as you can pick up some bad habits, as the real test is slightly different and more in-depth. Just read the instructions carefully before you start.

Arora Park Hotel in Colnbrook was great and about 5 minutes Uber to Waterside.

You must have a lot of pretax outgoings into pension etc., because whilst I am not short haul, I have taken home an average of more than double your max, so far this tax year.

I used pilot assessments and found it to be useful. It’s slightly different to the actual test, so it’s good to use as a tool to get an idea of what to expect and practice multitasking, but don’t become over reliant on it.

It would be worth spending some time practicing mental maths for some of the decent rates too.

Well pp23 shorthaul basic is 176,470, and a year ago pp22 was 156,260 so the average over the last 12 months was not 180k of course. Does Listentotaxman allow for the removal of personal allowance? Flying pay is taxable as are most of the allowances. No salary going on any car, I'm not using the EV scheme. Not doing any AVCs.

I do have a personal overtime ban so just do my roster and thats it.

To be fair, I did average the last 12 months, so I was on a lower paypoint and we have had a few mini pay-rises during the last 12 months.

GS-Alpha - are you a UK tax payer? Do you max out the overtime and not pay into pension? I'm only asking because that Listentotaxman site suggests that (even with zero pension contribution), you must be on 380,000 GBP a year and I know that the highest Longhaul scale in BA is currently 212,500 so unsure where the extra comes from!

(P.S. I hate UK tax!)

Apologies for the perhaps silly question

If you choose to reside in a country that does not have a double taxation agreement with the UK, does this mean you will have to pay full HMRC tax and won't be eligible to receive your gross, and only pay tax in the country in which you reside?

A double tax agreement (DTA) - or lack of - is a completely separate issue to the statutory residence test for the UK and it will not preclude (stop) you from applying for a Section 690. All it means is (forgive me if I’m teaching you to suck eggs) it will stop you from paying tax twice on the same income in both your resident country and your country of employment. Obviously if you don’t have a Section 690 applied to your pay and you are paid net of UK tax then, as you clearly know, a lack of a DTA is going to be your downfall but the presence of a DTA or not has no bearing on your ability to apply for Section 690 status in the first instance.

When you are issued with Section 690 status then your actual tax liability at this stage is not zero you’re actually being assessed at a nominal 10% of earnings being subject to UK taxation but until you start earning over 125,000 or so then 10% of your gross figure will result in your taxable earnings being below the tax free allowance and therefore nothing is taken at source.

At the end of the UK tax year you then complete your tax return and, as part of that, you work out your actual working percentage in the UK for that year. If you’ve earned over £125,000 and paid some UK tax but your actual UK working percentage is small enough to drag you back under the tax free allowance then that sum that you’ve paid from salary will be refunded. Usually reasonably quickly to their credit. (In my experience).

But at this stage if your liability is still over the tax free allowance (by your UK working percentage not being low enough to offset an elevated level of earnings) and there’s no DTA in your resident country then you’re Donald Ducked you’ll be paying tax twice on the same income. In most cases it will be a fairly small amount until you start getting to the higher pay points especially LHS but that’s not really much consolation here.

Thank you for the in depth response

Meanwhile, can anyone advise on an appropriate place to conduct a practice sim session? I'm doing the non rated so presume it will be on the A380, although they said it could be the 320 too

Somebody asked about this at an assessment day. The response was that candidates who had passed but their performance was less than optimal would be deemed unsuitable for long haul, but offered the A320. The reasoning offered was that the training footprint on the long haul fleets was far more condensed than the A320 training footprint - and it is far easier for them to get you additional sectors on the A320 than say on the 777.

I’ve said it multiple times on this thread, but holding out for long haul is a fool’s errand, particularly now - join the mainline list as soon as you possibly can. You are talking about a 34 plus year career, if you want to go long haul and join the 320 say six months ahead of someone holding out for a DEP LH position, with current recruitment you could be literally 100 or even more places ahead of them on the MSL. You’d do your 4-5 years on the 320 (half or more of them at a decent seniority and enjoying what that does for you in JSS), bid for long haul, join at about 85% or above P77L or whatever fleet you choose, ABOVE all the LH DEPs who joined after you (and yes that never being bottom seniority on LH does make a big difference) and potentially get your long haul command years earlier - OR you can enjoy being an SFO on a long haul fleet waiting for a command at a suitable juncture, having maybe only ever spent 2 years of your BA career below a seniority in seat of 80%.

If you haven’t flown at an airline that operates with seniority based bidding, this may all sound Nigel-ish but believe me being sat at sub 50% (or even much lower :E) seniority in your seat makes a dramatic difference.

I wouldn't have held out for long haul per se, but ~2 yrs ago (right before I reached 500h >5300KG) BA changed the criteria and said that to go A320 at LHR, you had to have >500hrs A320 specifically. If you had 500hrs on anything else, then EF LGW was your only path, unless you had 1500hrs on your non A320 type. As someone who doesn't even live on the same land mass, I'd have had to move to LGW for 5 yrs (due to the uncommutable roster) and I would have taken a decent paycut during those 5 yrs too (I know PP34 will tip the scale the other way, but a bird in hand is worth 2 in the bush). I deemed these 2 items combined to be a bigger pain than ~2yrs of lost seniority. I accept I may have grossly miscalculated, but one thing's for sure, I've been home the last 2 yrs and if I pass the sim, I will be home the next 3 yrs too - because it will be LHR whether LH or SH.

I was very unlucky with my timing, there was a colleague in my current airline at the time, same aircraft type but he had about 400 hrs more than me. He got in during the window in early 2023 where you could go to LHR with only 500hrs on any type.

​​​​​​​Not any more.

Wondered how long people have been waiting for the phone call after receiving the success email after the sim? Thanks

I’d sort of concur with this. For instance you have to go a hell of a long way up the 777 list to start lifting yourself out of the trip two days off fatigue by JSS grind. Easily in excess of 12 years service just by eyeballing it, it’s probably more. With commands sitting at 18 years right now (and reducing) if you want your LH command you’ll get just a couple of years of semi decent lifestyle before plunging back to bottom of the P1 list doing the same all over again. God knows how many birthdays, important family events, weekends etc you’ve missed by the end of all that.

There’s a reason the Reality Check (employee survey) results are so absolutely shockingly appalling with Exhausting being the second most commonly cited complaint.

I entered the pool around a month ago now, and had the phone call today for SH at LHR. June 2025 start though!

I do overtime, £10k a year goes into the pension and yes, I pay an insane amount of UK tax.

The computer test is no longer a single event. Eagle, group, and interview all on the same day.

Hi all, if anyone has any recent feedback from the interview would you be kind enough to drop me a DM
Ive got my interview at waterside coming up soon!

thanks

Are you rated on the 320? And if so, any idea what the course footprint would be for a type rated pilot vs non-type rated?

A quick question RE tax status as a LH pilot

Say you reside abroad and choose to pay tax in your adopted country ...

1 - Do I understand correctly that you are still liable to pay UK tax for the nights you do spend in the UK, even if you total less than 90 in the tax year? (I have no idea roughly how many UK nights a junior LH pilot can expect, but say on reserve, sim, training, B&B nights before/after duty etc)
2 - Is it true that BA can calculate UK nights on your behalf and do the calculation on your payroll? (I've read this forum from start to finish and pretty sure I read it, but can't find it now)
3 - Do I understand correctly that BA give you your net salary in the form of gross, minus the small HMRC deduction for your UK nights, then minus your adopted country's income tax?