Originally Posted by
q400_driver
do you actually work/have ever worked in the company? I feel that there is a lot of rumor milling going on here and a very few facts. The only thing true is that the roster indeed is not commuter-friendly. Like for most airlines - make your base city your home and you'll be fine. The guys typically complaining the most are the ones who try to keep commuting going or who have bad sleeping habits. Eventually they fail and the bitterness comes out.
In the busiest summer months I flew roughly 70 hours a month with about 10 days off, FDP around 125 hours. There is no average roster but generally it looks something like this - 4 on, 3 off, 5 on, 2 off, 5 on, 4 off etc.. Never seen a 6-1, in fact "6 on" I've only seen with some standby days in the beginning or at the end of the period. I get about 2 to 3 short night stops a month and maybe 2 to 3 long night stops.
For the short night stop you check in at roughly 10 in the evening, fly to a close by destination (TKU,TMP, LED, KGD or LPX) you go to the hotel for about 2-3 hours and get back to Riga in the early hours of the morning. Check out before 7 in the morning and you are done.
Generally it's an ok place to work, their maintenance is the best I've seen - aircraft are in top condition, it is very rare to fly with something INOP, and if you do, it won't be long before it's fixed. Yes - some days are tougher than others, but there are very few days in a month when your duty period touches 12 hours and if it does - typically it's because you had long turnarounds/ground time. Most of the time your day is done after 8-9 hours of work. It's not a perfect roster but I prefer it over the Ryanairs famous 5/4 where for 5 days you do 12 hour duty and then spend 4 days in your bed trying to recover your will to live.
Upgrades to CS are happening and Dash captains become captains on CS, no one is downgraded to an FO. There's a system in which you can see the seniority list and who's ahead for an upgrade, the process is transparent, but sure enough if you join now you will probably stay on the dash for a while. Is it going to be till the end? I don't think so, there are some dash captains who don't want to go to the CS simply because it potentially will mean that they could be sent to Tallinn or Vilnius. Then there are the CS/737 FOs who will want to upgrade to left seat sooner rather than later again causing movement in the organization
If I was you Mehlsocke I would be more concerned about your wife/children. Sure enough if your wife likes to be a sit-at-home mom, I guess she will do fine, however any career opportunities for people not speaking Latvian are quite slim outside aviation industry/IT/Finance. There are very few international schools around for your children and the ones that exist seem to be geared towards the super-wealthy Russians.. there's really no middle ground when it comes to education
We must be working in different BTs, because my roster sounds a bit different. This is my pattern from end of August until end of October:
6on/4off/6on/3off/6/2/7(!)/1/5/1/5/4/6/2/3/2
October is my first month since April where I have 10 days off, 140-160 duty hours every month with 60-80 block (so yes, a lot of sitting around). Check in is constantly changing between 6am, 11am, 2pm, 5pm and 10pm, never less than 4 legs per day (except short nightstops, or longer layovers, for them it’s minimum 3 legs per day, including a possible DH flight).
Yes, doable, just how long do you want to do it?