Good post greenfields.
My first post in over a decade in the sandpit, trying to add succintly:
- Randomness. This is applicable to everything below. It is the sublimation process embedded in all. I think it is what wears down the most.
- Demotions. One always thinks is the rest getting this stuff. But it does happen OFTEN in here (anyone has a number??). For random reasons. With all the consequences that carries... Career and possibly personality changing.
From the perspective of a captain: How do you think it feels flying with a lad that is 15 years and 10k hours more experienced than yourself, knowing he has been recently demoted. Break in CRM maybe?
- Failed upgrades. Last number I heard (not confirmed, again, anyone has a number?) is 60% failure. During the course that is. If you count the interview, it is probably more. If you think: It's OK, it is only 5 years to try... Failing feels wrong, demotivates, and then you have to apply to another airline, in which you would probably be upgrading by now anyway. Which brings the next bullet point,
- Wrong Training Mentality. If more than half upgrade candidates fail... are they to blame? obviously not. If every now and then a perfectly capable individual with a clean record, goes and just fails a PPC, isn't it more than possible than a remedial training should fix it? Well, not here.
- Fear. Mentioned often enough. Our new boss recently told us by video, there is no fear. He did not say there is no cheesecake. Everybody knows there is no cheesecake.
Latest fear inductor is: If you don't get a good enough score in your PPC, you are given a follow up: Simulators and training flights. You don't even need to fail.
- Fired. Same as above.
- And all of that to keep a job that does not give a life-work balance, and does not let you save either: Dubai is crazy expensive now (to use a standard good, coke went up by 55% this year alone)
- Accomodation. Randomness. A couple good friends just left over this issue.
The latest add-ons to Sandpit 3.0 are:
- Augmenting crew responsibilities
- No salary increase + Dubai massive inflation
- Surprise line-checks
- Bonds for upgrades
- Upgrade minimum age
- Custom alcohol/cigarettes ban
- Brief, at 5000ft. Really?
- Hotels by the airport. This is worse than it sounds. Half of the fun is to see places. Half the fun gone.
- Flying with magenta liners. Not horrible. Most of them know their stuff. But it is different than a decade ago, when anybody had 4k hours, mostly jet. Take-overs are more common now...
Having said all this, and before Harry the Cod inserts his tempering reply, I will also say that I have dodged luckily most of the above crap. Only lightly shafted at one point in the progression, and got my command in time with no issues, and no issues since... yet.
I am good to go 'til my next PPC, or surprise line check, or medical, or anything funny like a local driver crashing into me, and have me expelled from the country because it's obviously my fault driving at 90 in the right lane.
I am still a happy chappy. But have to work my mind around to keep it that way.
the Witch
Last edited by desert witch; 22nd Jan 2018 at 17:33.