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#1 Dublin, four years, and I said in Connor's training thread that base allocation is the part that surprises people, so here is the whole thing, because a new joiner who is told 'Kaunas' on the last day of training needs to have read this first.
How it works
At the end of the course you submit base preferences, usually three, from the list of bases with vacancies. The company allocates based on where it needs crew, in seniority order within the course (which for a new course is effectively random). You are told. You can appeal. Appeals rarely change anything in the first allocation. You can request a transfer after a set period, typically a year, and transfers do happen when the base you want has a vacancy.
The reality
The big bases (Dublin, Stansted, Manchester, Bergamo, Madrid) are full of senior crew and have the fewest new joiner slots. The growing bases and the smaller ones (the Polish, Lithuanian, Portuguese and some Italian bases, the new UK ones) are where the vacancies are. A new joiner with Dublin, Dublin, Dublin as preferences will get one of the others. A new joiner with a genuine 'anywhere' has the best chance of a base they can live with, because the allocators notice flexibility.
What a base you did not choose looks like
A move to a city you have never seen, with a month's notice, on a low first year salary, to find a flat and a life. It is hard. It is also, for a lot of crew, the best year of their career: a small base is a family, a cheap city is a saving, and a new country is a new country. The crew who arrive at Kaunas angry leave after six months. The crew who arrive curious are still there, or transferred to Dublin with a year of stories.
How to make it work
Accept it before you arrive. The appeal is a ritual, not a lever. Find the base group chat before you land and ask for a flat share. Learn ten words of the language in the first week. Do the year properly, because the transfer request is decided partly on your record at the base you did not want. And remember that a year is a year. It ends.
The honest maths
I got Dublin first time because I said 'anywhere in Ireland or the UK' and Dublin had a vacancy that week. Luck, mostly. My batch mate got Kaunas, did two years, transferred to Dublin, and says Kaunas was better. I believe her.
Connor, this is for you. Everyone else, add your base story.
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#2 Read every word. Changing my preferences to 'Ireland, UK, then anywhere' tonight. And I have looked up Kaunas. It has a castle. I can work with a castle.
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#3 Bergamo number one, and we get very few new joiners because the base is full of people like me who are never leaving. A new joiner who wants Italy should list the Sicilian and Sardinian bases. They have vacancies and they have beaches.
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#4 Dublin, and I got Dublin by luck as well, and the crew who came via a year in Poland are, without exception, the better crew. The small base teaches the job faster.
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#5 Porto, and Ryanair Porto is a mid sized base with new joiner vacancies, and if TAP does not move I will be listing Porto, Lisbon, anywhere in Iberia. The 'anywhere' being noticed is the useful thing I did not know.
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#6 @flyingmaria22 anywhere in Iberia is a good list. The Portuguese bases are growing and the Spanish ones have turnover. You will get one.
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#7 Wizz, and our allocation works the same way and the same rule applies: the flexible new joiner gets the livable base, the Dublin Dublin Dublin one gets the surprise. Every low cost carrier. Same system.
