Easyjet UK vs Jet2
 

Good morning,

I would be interested to know people's thoughts on which is the better job, Easyjet (UK based) or Jet2, assuming you're in your preferred base.

Pay, pension, leave system, company culture, training department etc etc.....any information appreciated!!

Regards

Having experience of both companies the real answer is "it depends" there is a variance in both companies base to base, and between seats it really all depends on your personal preference, career stage and stage of life. Jet2 get a lot of things right but are by no means perfect, staff travel for example is crap and 2 sector deep lates are par for the course. easyJet on the other hand have a fixed roster pattern (from SFO) and being able to plan your life around it is a real plus, however a full block of 5 days flying with a mix of long 2 and 4 sector days are becoming the norm and a real concern for long term fatigue. Both have part time working options and the pay at both companies is pretty much level pegging with easyJet's sector pay just nudging it ahead. However Jet2 have better pension contributions and easyJet has better day off payments and generous guaranteed bonuses after 10 years. From personal experience Jet2 has a more positive working environment and I feel less of a "number". If you really want a quick command then easyJet can furnish you with that happily, although expect to have to take a different base (mostly LGW) when your time comes. Having said that Jet2 have big expansion plans and are mucleing their way in to more and more UK airports and easyJet have history of closing smaller bases. Have a look at both, ask yourself what you want out of your career and then choose the one that fits you and your ambitions the best.

Been here (J2) 10ish years. Company culture generally good. Training dept is good, some would say expects very high standards but in ten years of training/checks etc I’ve had a good experience almost without exception.

FY24
Given the EZY pay deal earlier in the year, EZY skippers are paid a couple of hundred £ more annually, than J2 skippers.

Including basic, flying pay, profit share I’m expecting a gross of circa £160k for the FY24/25. That’s before my pension deductions etc.

J2 pension contribution for skippers is 10%, vs I think EZYs 7% (stand to be corrected on that).

obviously EZYs pay deal was multi year, it remains to be seen what the next few pay reviews in J2 will bring.

I’m full time and I’ve flown about 400 hours/120 odd sectors in the last rolling 12 months.

I’ve always been pretty successful getting the leave I want, even when in the last bid group for the season in question, however, summer leave is restricted to 9 days or so. Not sure if ezy have a similar policy.

staff travel is essentially non existent. EZYs system from what I’ve heard is phenomenal, many seem to think it’s better even than BAs.

overall, if you’re looking at the same base etc, if you want access to great staff travel I’d go EZY. If you want a quieter winter (granted, for now) and were less concerned about staff travel then I’d go J2

just my thoughts, I’m very happy but have plenty of mates in ezy who are equally happy!

I have no idea what it is like at Jet2 (never having work there) other than what I read here, speaking to colleagues that have left and also seeing many leave easyjet - but based on what JM926 posted (which I was surprised at reading tbh), you'll be working much harder at easyjet - closer to 800 hours, 750 if you are lucky and you will be knackered. Deep lates also at easyjet and sometimes on the back of a 3 or 4 sector day - AMS/PMI getting in at 2/3am is a rostered duty; there are also some 5am returns in LGW (AYT); It is not abnormal to see in the 5 day blocks 18 sector weeks, brace yourself. so if you are comparing simple hard cash easyjet may pay more but most skippers and some sfo's are part-time simply because full time is not sustainable. from the outside looking in Jet2 does seem to have a more positive message amongst crew and passengers and they are muscling their way into easyJet Uk bases.

(7% at easy is correct - you have to contribute 2% as a minimum)

Basic at the two is almost exactly the same.

easyJet captains get 5,10 or 15% loyalty bonus after 2, 5 or 10 years.

EasyJet sector pay is considerably higher. For example an XL sector at J2 gets £56 whereas at easyJet it is £107. Also an XL at J2 is 1600nm vs easyJet 1500nm which pushes some of the canaries into the shorter bracket. About £20k variable pay would be about right at easyJet. Plus payments for short notice changes, working into a day off and working your day off. Quite possible to increase that figure considerably.

Profit share at easyJet is 5% of basic maximum, I do not know what the percentage is at J2 but I understand it is higher.

Pension at easyJet is 7% vs 10% at J2.

A 10 year captain total package including on target bonus and company pension contribution would be £195,000 or thereabouts. We also have RPI+3% and RPI+2% secured for 2025/26.

Some captains will only be receiving the 5 year, 10% loyalty bonus so would be a bit lower. There are very few captains flying with less than 5 years service.

would be interested to hear the equivalent figures for jet2 but my understanding is that total remuneration is currently quite a bit higher at easyJet.

workload I gather is lower at j2. Full time captain at easyJet would be around 700hrs but some bases are a lot higher. I’d be surprised if j2 didn’t try and squeeze a bit more out of their crews in the future, but that is just speculation.

Jet2 will always be more seasonal than low-cost airlines as it's a holiday company. Therefore the workload (and sector pay) will likely always be just slightly lower at Jet2 (and justifiably). It's a case of balancing workload versus pay and what's important to you as a pilot. Having worked for both, I can say the biggest factor for me isn't either of those things, it's the atmosphere at work. No toxic stuff, every day is a good day out, and I don't tire of coming to work. It's all very well comparing Ts and Cs but every individual is different and every airline is different. A better comparison would be LoCo versus LoCo (RYR v EZY) or Jet2 vs TUI etc. J2 and EZY are very different business with different business models and mostly different customers.

Don’t know what fleet that is, or which base! But 600-650hrs is more likely IMO

Yeah that’s fair…I’m in a regional base. You’re quite right, if you’re MAN/STN/BHX you could well do more hours than some of the other bases. 550ish has been my highest ever hours in a calendar year since joining 10+ years ago.

Whilst there are a few long, badly planned days at easyJet I can’t say that in the 3 bases I’ve been in have I ever experienced a ‘toxic’ environment. 99% of crews are pleasant and make the day pass quickly.

EasyJet has an excellent safety culture, fatigue and sickness system, training department and crucially an effective union presence. I’m happy to be corrected but this may be a crucial difference between the two, my understanding is that the J2/BALPA relationship is poor.

if anyone is able to provide their J2 ‘total package’ to compare to the one I posted I think it would be helpful to anyone reading.

For Jet2 PPJN is pretty accurate, I’m only doing LHS here.

Captains basic £136500 for year one no increments for years in service.

Captains and SFO / FO / SO receive a tie pin for every five year service.
possibly worth a couple of £ on eBay.

Sector pay as on PPJN I’ve been in four bases over the years and average about
£1000.00 month in sector and duty pay, higher in summer than winter.

Pension 10% from company and minimum 4 % from employee…

There are day off payments but they’re pretty crap after tax, and personally I’m generally too knackered after multiple nights to Turkey and Greece to even
think about working a day off.

So including basic, variable pay and pension the package for a line captain
is about £161,000. I got about £7k from the profit share this year. But I took
some unpaid winter leave which bizarrely gives you less profit share although you’ve actually saved the company money by only getting half pay for the time you get off, whereas if you’d worked you’d have had full pay and just done one flight a week.

That £161k ish is the highest you get. You lose a percentage if you take any of the fixed roster patterns.

As was said above you have hardly any control over your roster, some very weak protections to four duties a month, Poor leave bidding limited to nine days leave between May and October. Impossible to book an RDO less than about three months ahead even if there are any days available. Everything to do with roster protection, part time working, rest days after long flights and profit share are at the discretion of the company and non-contractual, due to lack of proper BALPA presence (entire CC just stepped down so there isn’t one at the moment). But to be fair BALPA is ineffective because most of the pilots are too mean to pay the fees, so it’s their own lookout, if conditions get worse relative to other companies they’re reaping what they sow.

The relatively good things are that most of the pilots base managers and regional PBMs are helpful and approachable, and the safety department and reporting system is fair and approachable. I don’t think I’d leave Easy jet for J2, but I haven’t worked for Easy so I don’t really know. But I have worked for six other airlines apart from J2 and they all have good bits and crap bits, and the best ones (for the employees) have gone bust, which probably tells us something.

So before the 20% pay rise easyJet had, the remuneration was approximately the same.

certainly sounds like the bidding, leave, GDOs and BALPA engagement seems better at easyJet.

Jet2 bonus isn't 5% maximum. It's 5% of company profit divided between the qualifying workforce. Management and cabin crew don't qualify, not sure who else.

This year captains got about £14k, so about 10% of basic.

Nobody quite knows how it's calculated but it's based on basic salary. So, SFOs get less than captajns, FOs get less than SFOs, engineers somewhere in there... and so on.

a jet2 captain just said he only got £7k bonus last year.

if you’re referencing the screenshot that went around last year with those kind of figures on, I believe this was shown to be inaccurate.

……..and he said he got less because he took unpaid leave over winter.

For clarity, I’m a full time skipper, profit share I got in July was circa 14k pre tax

Edited to say, profit share is discretionary and obviously the exact amount each year is subject to amount of profit and the amount of employees which it’s shared amongst…, it sounds like the ezy loyalty bonus is perhaps more contractually binding from my limited knowledge

it does seem rather opaque. Your colleague up thread must have taken a lot of unpaid leave to get half what you did?

easy bonus structure is set in stone but each year the company sets a target which decides on whether we get 0% or 5% (different for FOs). So we could find ourselves in a position where the company makes record profit but we don’t get the bonus because it was lower than they’d hoped. Amazingly we got the full bonus in a year the company made a loss.

I'm referencing my own pay.

The £7K bonus may have been for a relatively new joiner (nothing in first year and pro rata in second year.)

Ok, let’s put this one to bed. For a full time Captain the bonus was between £13 and £14k, but there’s lots of variables. As far as I know it makes no difference how senior you are, just have to be employed long enough to get it.

I took two months of weird half time winter leave, and my bonus, AFTER TAX was about £7k. Don’t forget it’s taxable and there is no way of putting it into your pension or anything else….

If you think seniority matters nine years in, one tie pin, another to come next year 🤣

thanks for explaining. so if you add the profit share the total package is somewhere in the region of £175k?

Easyjet (including max bonus and company pension contribution)
Year 0 - £167k
Year 2 - £181k
Year 5 - £188k
Year 10 - £195k