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

I would say total package in the region of 161k, that being basic, flying pay plus profit share.

if you want to include pension then about 175k

5/3/5/4 at easyJet fixed pattern vs jet2 random roster approximating 5/2/5/3.

easyjet take 5days off with the wrap around you get 12off.

Jet2 take your 9days off in your 4month summer you get 9days off. No wrap around days as standard.

I considered J2 but got a sample roster and it was awful - dreadfully boring and often disrupted mostly canaries or Turkey out and backs returning at all hours, airport standbys in some grim room, bad hotels, and even the winter rosters were filled up with standbys on the 5/2 ratio. Few weekends off. Reportly rather uncooperative CC and GC too; FD line and training slighty old school but v good. Did at least include health cover. Went elsewhere though.

You got that all from a sample roster? Wowzers

Yes, but if you're clever you can use 3 RDOs at the end of the month 3 at the beginning of the next month plus your 9 days leave to get 15 consecutive days in the peak period.

Absolutely, I guess most people have that in mind and that’s why July, August month transition normally has no leave available. Unless you are top of the first bid group that year.

Don’t plan on 15 days off during peak summer.

Whoever reported to you that cabin crew and ground are uncooperative is either:

1) Lying
2) Someone who is asking other crew to violate SOPs because they have their own way of operating.

The CC and GC are actually the friendliest I’ve worked with. The ‘one team’ mantra actually means something.

Captains who are ‘their own man’ here don’t last long.

I’ve been in jet2 for a year and a half so far and my experience does not match this at all. LHS, regional base and very happy.

perfectly decent hotels although haven’t needed them much, winter rosters are a dream come true and even when on standby you have 2hrs to report! Most weekends at least partly off through RDOs. Cabin and ground crew are fantastic.

I’ve read an article that EasyJet have now removed crew rooms and you just walk to the aircraft from the car park? Even as a low cost airline that is very extreme, surely that impacts morale as well?

I think I’d actually prefer this at Jet2, providing the report time isn’t reduced. At big bases it would save the rush to get to the airside crew room then on towards the aircraft. You could have an extra 20 minutes of preflight and enjoy your coffee at a reasonable pace. Of course you’d see less of your comrades than you would at the crew room, so there should be a mandatory CRM session every month at a local bar paid for out of the base manager’s budget :-)

this is true, we’ve been reporting to aircraft for a few years now. Despite some concerns from some at the start, I don’t think anyone would go back. Report time remains 60min and we are required to join the back of the security queue at that time.

There are a lot of things I don’t like about the EZY SOP based on what I’ve heard from friends there, but this is one that I think actually benefits safety and crew fatigue. I can’t think of any reason to report to a crew room in the digital age. Providing the report time isn’t falsely reduced of course.

It's not totally true, crew rooms have not been removed, they still exist, just not for the purpose of printing flight plans.

Last I heard easyJet now have a crewing team in the crew rooms? Don’t think I’d enjoy speaking to a crew controller face to face though I’ll be honest, bad enough over the phone! :ouch:

That's only in Gatwick. The rest of the network is still managed from the ICC near Luton.

on the contrary, crews campaigned to have this team returned after its removal during Covid.

We lost a lot of good people who looked after LGW crews in base.

Crewing controllers at Jet2 are a pleasure to speak to, whether on the phone or face to face. Same with all staff. Hopefully it will remain this way until I retire in 20 years.

I’m not sure what EZY is like these days for crewing etc.

I’ll give you one - commercial pressure. Here is another one, trying to brief a crew in a stair well or busy terminal whilst waiting for your delayed aircraft.

The on time performance/ silo culture at EZY is a huge threat to be managed every day. From a personal perspective going straight to the aircraft is good, from professional stand point not so much, and yes, the poster above who mentioned morale nailed it. EZY are now desperately trying to go put this genie back in the bottle. We have been managed by, largely, awful cabin crew managers for years, whose prime directive is OTP. It drove a huge wedge in. Now we have base captains trying to pretend they are our mates again - because they have been told to
do this. It really shows up some individuals - some are better than others. The legacy of Peter Bellew and his actions during Covid still linger, ask senior management who nodded along side him in Covid and the mask falls as being reminded of history is inconvenient.

It’s all well and good compatible T’s and C’s but you should really compare part time T’s and C’s. Full time is not sustainable at easyjet. Fatigue is awful, someone above said we have a great fatigue system at easyJet, I think I know what they are getting at but to be honest they are miss-guided. A great fatigue system begins in schedule construction and flows through to roster production. It’s all @rse about t1t in easyjet. We have an in achievable schedule that ensures maximum roster chaos in the operational environment. In terms of SBY coverage easyjet has, probably, the highest numbers in the U.K. at round about 20%, and yet, we still run out of pilots when a butterfly flaps its wings in Asia. Yes we can go fatigued and many think this is without recourse - leading to the idea of a “great” fatigue system. However, out new buddies, the previously invisible base captains, have been ordered to haul us in for a chat over refused discretion and use if fatigue. How very Ryanair / but with a smile from your new “buddy”.

The company operates in a very silo style culture and it costs us millions year after year with the same pathetic excuses from weak leaders year after year.

In summary;

Pay is good ish. Equipment good. Training is currently very weakly led and poorly rostered. Great people to fly with but as a line captain I fly to a lot of ****ty places at night with very little experience sat next to me, who are bitter about their contract from day 1. Good regional bases.
Rosters will damage your health so you will be forced onto part time at some point if you can let go of the FOMO on being the richest person in the grave yard. Staff travel - good in LGW - **** everywhere else unless you are happy to holiday in the low season winter months. We just got private health, which our incoming CEO says it’s great and why we cannot get a previous share scheme reinstated. It is great - mutually - as we have too many pilots sick languishing on NHS lists further driving **** rosters and high SBY coverage. Over 20 years in if you couldn’t tell, immune to easyjet orange spin, we are very poorly led and the culture is full of holes where cabin services run the show - they are even conducting pilot interviews - no easyjet pilot in sight. Madness.

Apparently we are getting hats next year.

I think this pretty much sums up the two sides of the argument EZY vs J2H... You get paid slightly more at EZY and have the staff travel option, but you work harder for it and you have to put up with a lot of BS (Cabin Crew interviewing pilots? How can CC possibly pick up red flags in pilot competencies such as decision making and threat management?!). At J2H you get a nice working atmosphere, respect, and don't work too hard. For this 'privilege' you get paid a little bit less, and there's almost no staff travel apart from £200 off a holiday 3 times a year.

What culture you go for depends on your priorities as a pilot. I know guys who appreciate the staff travel, and the extra couple of hundred pounds a month. Then there a lot of us too that appreciate the company culture and the basing of choice. I'm in the latter, but then I don't have a big house with a mortgage in the home counties.