BOH

Just spotted this on the BBC, £1000 payment in 2 x £500 lumps to come across to BA provided they can start before July. Interesting they are asking for current airside clearance for either LHR or STN. LHR yes, but STN? Unless STN and LHR are interchangeable for clearance?

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61104230

Truthmonkey

Airside passes certainly used to be interchangeable (or at least could be activated for another/different airport) in the BAA days.

Suspect that holding a pass for one UK airport is at the very least a 'fast track' to obtaining one for another airport.

PUCCI GALORE

They've been vetted. I imagine that they are trying to get people over from Ryanair. They will not be able to refer to their manuals when being tested - unless they've altered that as well.

13901

The MAG/HAL vetting for airside passes (I understand this is mostly for ground-based work) is similar and therefore one can rather easily switch from HAL to MAG and return. Getting an airside pass involves a security check from Disclosure Scotland, which is pretty constantly backed up, and then a trip to HAL's pass issue team, which even back in the day was an adventure. Last time I had to re-do my pass it took me 4 attempts at having the interview/meeting/photo.

KARFA

I will be the one to ask the dumb question - as MAG and HAL are in England and assuming most people who are employed there live in England too, why isn't it a DBS check rather than Disclosure Scotland?

sigma421

Not sure if it's related but a lot of Heathrow's back office functions are carried out at the Heathrow Business Support centre which is in Paisley (it's visible on the left hand side of the M8 if you're driving from Glasgow towards the airport). It was a BAA facility back in the days that they owned Glasgow Airport but I guess they decided to keep it when the AGS sell-off happened.

Heathrow Tower

I think the current backlog for security clearance is about 4 months for a HAL pass, so I can certainly understand why they’d want candidates who already have one.

Tiger_lily

When I worked for Lloyds Banking Group they used Disclosure Scotland and I think the reasoning was it was cheaper than DBS. Current price for an enhanced DS check is £25 vs £43.60 or more depending who does the DBS.

That said I seem to recall my DS check taking a couple of weeks and it was a right faff to get my identity verified, had to take my documents all over London.

DBS is much easier now as it can mostly be done online and once they bring in the new digital identity checks in a few months it’ll be even easier and the cost of a DBS is coming down as a result.

Having said all that, if you provide the right combination of documents, you can get an enhanced DBS done in less than 6 hours, so I honestly don’t understand why processing times are being quoted in the region of weeks to get these passes issued.

13901

Sigma421 is spot on, a lot of back-office activities for HAL are done north of the border. Plus, why making processes simple when you can make them long, convoluted and complex?

DBS, at least for 'straightforward' cases where you haven't been abroad for too long or have to explain what exactly you did in that training camp in Baluchistan. The real black hole, in my experience, is the pass unit over in LHR.

Tiger_lily

Granted. If you’ve spent 5 years in Ukraine recently, getting the embassy to do a records check is going to be impossible. Getting any embassy to do a records check for long periods overseas is very hit and miss anyway

BOH

I do have some slight sympathy for BA because only until about 8 weeks ago we were still in a constant stop-start with regards to air travel in and out of the UK. To say the government's approach was ad-hoc and very knee jerk would be an understatement.

No wonder they delayed recruitment until only a few weeks ago.

Tiger_lily

This is also very true. No-one in their right minds is going to commit large amounts of cash to recruitment and paying staff if they pull the rug from under your feet at 24hrs notice

Tiger_lily

Granted. If you’ve spent 5 years in Ukraine recently, getting the embassy to do a records check is going to be impossible. Getting any embassy to do a records check for long periods overseas is very hit and miss anyway

Duck1981

I just spoke with my former GF who works for EasyJet and the reply re/ the offer was: 'no way'

13901

It's worth noting that the offer is for ground operations roles only.