Originally Posted by
Ollie Onion
Look I can see a couple of different themes here. One is a reluctance for this deal due to the perchieved reductions in Terms and Conditions with regard to the SO position. I totally understand that and would defend everyone’s right to protect those as they are hard won. Two, I don’t get trying to dress up the objections By saying things like ‘ex Cadets couldn’t fly an ATR into a small NZ strip, or without Jet experience you shouldn’t be sitting in a Jet’. BA, Cathay Pacific and Emirates all take direct entry FO’s who have no Jet experience, Qantas and Cathay both put SO’s onto large jets who only have 200 hours with very little multi time, using experience as a reason not to join the list is just not valid, maybe with the exception of Emirates the rest could pick and choose from a pool of relatively experienced candidates but the airlines want to get some cheaper people in at the bottom and keep them for longer, why does that surprise us?
One of my Air NZ mates said to me the other day ‘I think this is a bad idea as it would allow an ATR driver to move straight into an FO spot on the A320 and that is just dangerous!’ Why.......
I am actually genuinely interested in this attitude as I have seen a lot of different pilots with different levels of experience successfully get trained into quite different roles all over the world, the most important thing is a good training path and I am intrigued if people actually believe in the experience argument. If I was actually voting on this deal then I would vote no as terms and conditions once given away will never be gained back.
Then your mate is misguided and in all probability alone in that opinion. Whilst not many, Link Pilots have still been hired in recent years, plenty onto the A320 and the Tag & Release Pilots all hold notional F20 positions. I doubt any but a minority would be so arrogant as to think a Link Pilot could not be trained onto the A320.
What I have heard, however, are questions about a Link Captain going directly to an A320 Command when seniority permits i.e. not bidding F20 and simply waiting until C20. However, I'm sure the company will have systems in place for that much the same way they do for SO's taking A320 Commands.
In regards to Cadets Ollie, the biggest gripe is not so much the Company putting them into the Widebodies, but putting them in Widebodies under the guise of "Gaining experience before joining the Link Carriers". They've all but come out and said it! "Feedback from Link Training Captains is that low hour Pilots don't integrate well into Multi-Crew operations, so we'll make them SO's for 2 years before starting in the Links.... on severely reduced pay of course"
Many of the objections need to stop being viewed in isolation. The Company (and ALPA unfortunately) tried to sell us an entire package.
Originally Posted by
Brakerider
So why can’t Air NZ hire SOs externally who don’t have Jet time (within the 70:30 ratio) without Link pilots jumping up and down?
Soon we might have too as externals are pulling their applications due to the potential combined list.
But until now, it's been mostly Supply & Demand driven. Air NZ has been bombarded by CV's with 5k-10k+ hours and thousands of hours Jet so they had their pick of bunch... especially since, as I mentioned earlier, we ran shortened courses for A320 rated Pilots.