Originally Posted by 3Greens (Post 11810317)

BA at GATWICK take DEC

Originally Posted by Phantom4 (Post 11809655)

Sounds like you’ve had enough and I understand,did seven years out there and time to return.
However,there are a number of 320 Hitmen who can destroy longhaul people .
Stories of military instructors being reduced to tears on line training and shouting at the trainee on the aircraft.
If I were you I would consider Jet2,good luck.

Originally Posted by GS-Alpha (Post 11809435)

Pre-command freeze on type is 1 year, on a different type it is 4 years. I have never seen someone released from a pre-command freeze within mainline BA.

Originally Posted by White Van Driver (Post 11585362)

It might be a good idea here to just give potential joiners a quick rundown of our rostering system, JSS.

Each month the company lists all the trips for a full month. P777 its normally around 1500 or so trips to be shared among the 600ish copilots on the fleet. We then have a few days to put together our bids. This is currently happening now, for March rosters.

You can make up to 15 "bid groups".
In each bid group you have 7 buckets to fill with the trips, using a sequence of commands. Ultimately you can differentiate between the trips however you like... Mondays, report after 11.45am, Caribbean, BA283 on Wednesday, long layovers in Mauritius, anything you like right down to a certain flight number on a certain date.
The 7 buckets range from what JSS will try to give you lots of if it can, down to what it will try to avoid giving you, if it can. You can leave any trips you really dont want outside by not putting them in any bucket at all, and JSS won't even look at those trips for you.
But if it doesn't have enough work to build you a roster, that Bid Group will fail and it'll move onto the next Bid Group.

After it has made a roster for everyone, if it has too many leftover trips, JSS will open up rosters from the bottom up to squeeze more trips onto your month. It'll still try to give you what you've asked for but really all bets are off. This is called Global Constraints and has recently gone all the way to the top of the list causing much frustration.

On a practical level, i find as junior P777 i can't get any particular day off im after, but if i give it 20 destinations i like, it might give me one or two from that list. The rest will be from the lower buckets.

For March, I've tried to get a certain Wed/Thu off for childcare. Then I've tried to get the following weekend off. Then ive tried to avoid JKF EWR ORD. Then I've listed 23 places I like in the top 3 buckets (of approx 45 destinations on the fleet). I'll update here the result if anyone's interested.

Apologies if this post is seen as a bit off piste. But bidding and rostering is such a big part of life at BA I think it probably warrants a discussion...

Originally Posted by swervin'mervin (Post 11324736)

I too interviewed quite a while ago, sounded like the above example. Not sure if they still do it but there was a capacity test, computer based with headset - frequency changes, dct to's, altitudes, headings, descent level by ### using v/s and groundspeed, ecam type actions, systems management, routine monitoring, priority tasks getting busier and busier and busier (was quite fun tbh!), try and zone out from the other candidates master warnings going off! I'm sure they tell you what to expect on the invite?