Thanks
Waterhorse I think it's the best explanation I've ever read.
I'd also add that from the various comparisons that we've seen, BA pilots seem to be close to their European counterparts (LH and AF, since they were named in the FT article earlier in the thread), although knowing AF, they will almost certainly have much better perks since formerly state-owned companies tend to have those in France (EDF employees didn't use to pay for electricity at home for example).
Do you know if BA actually have 300 open pilot positions as mentioned earlier? Or is 300 an estimation of the shortfall if current pilots stopped accepting overtime? Because somebody also said that BA had 5 applications for each open position which seems to contradict this. I know you can't trust everything you read on the Internet, but I'm guessing the truth is probably somewhere in-between...