hi all,
i am turkish. i have been flying as FO as P4 on 737 at THY since 2014. i have more than 6000 hours and waiting for upgrade almost 2 years, I cannot see what will be happen about upgrades because of seniority. they put the pilots into upgrade lists who have relatives and relationships with goverment people. as you can see, “game of thrones” on theatres.??!!
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since 2016, crew planning and rostering are worse than ever.
- THY is using a software named “Carmen” for crew planning. they are modifying and changing its software to adapt new **** FTL and their rules.
- they are making so many inputs into software so as to arrange some good flights with a proper resting time, funny and fancy destination for managers, relatives of managers and their good friends as TRI/TRE etc.
- pilot union “HAVA-IS” is just a **** and head of this union is relative to goverment and thy management so they are not protecting pilots. never.
- on 737 fleet, you are planned at least 15 days layovers. you are AWAY from your home at least 15 days.
- 10-12 days layovers cover Anadolujet flights staying in different cities in Turkey such as 4-5 block days 3-4 times in a month. ( %90 percent Ankara, rest is Antalya, Izmir, Adana, Trabzon, etc.) with minimum rest time which is 10 hours(most of the time they plan 10-12 hours resting time) starting next flight early in the morning reporting time 3-5 am local time 3-4 legs each day 4 days in a row. you are logging 4hours flight time with a flight duty time 13:30hours according to FTL.(insanely wasting too much time for almost nothing)
- most of the time transfer between airport and hotels around 45 minutes that makes 1h30minutes to hotel and way back to airport and it is included in resting time.
- on 737 fleet %90 percent of time you have only anadolujet and africa flights and layovers.
- % 50 percent of africa flights have 2 legs until going to hotel. logging 7.5-8 hours and arriving hotel around 3-4 am local time. you have 22 hours rest time officially but as i mentioned above you are already wasting 2 hours during transfers. you will have a pick up time on the same day around 22:00-24:00 local time in the evening. so you cant sleep enough and rest properly before flight after you wake up in the afternoon.
- from africa flights, you arrive at istanbul in the morning around 8-9 am local time. next day, you have a stdby duty starting at 3 am local time lasts 8 hours until 11 am local time. most of the time they give you a call around 3-4 am by interrupting your sleep at night for reporting time.
- crew planning department call you on your OFF days for a flight duty, they try to push you to accept the flight by proposing some ideas about pilot shortage, supporting and helping our company. they are talking and behaving on the line such as they are begging on you but behind scene they just put you in place you are an idiot. (many times when they called me, i was with a friend next to me who had stdby duty but somehow they were not calling him???!!!) if you dont accept the flight, they duly note your name, then they start to punish you, taking your planned flights in the next 3-4 days out of your roster by replacing stdby and reserve duties which means they will inform you between stdby duty hours, turning your life into HELL, by making your life unplanned.
- according to new protocol agreed between HAVA-IS and THY, they can plan flights 7 days in a row mixing flight patterns starting early in the morning or late in the evening with 12 hours resting. it is impossible to focus and have a proper rest. they always plan early flights around 2-3 am local time after your double OFF. so you cannot count your second dayoff for full rest.
- most of the domestic flights are short flights so you cannot even eat during your flight because cabin crews reject to give you food during flight by complaining such as “they dont have enough time to serve for cockpit” and company also supports cabin crew against pilots by placing passengers in priority instead of pilot’s physiological needs. so dont expect to eat during anadolujet operation in flights????!!!!
- they started to plan 737 cockpit crews 4-5 time in a month from Sabiha Gokcen(SAW). you are transferred from Ataturk Airport to Sabiha by crewbus takes around 1.5-2 hours. after you complete 4 legs flight, you are transferred back to Ataturk Airport by another 1h30m, (most of the time more than 2 hours depending on traffic jam in istanbul) as deadhead crew. so your resting time already started in crewbus according to FTL!!!!!!. sounds funny huh? but it is %100 real. you are expect to go to flights 4 days in a row with these pattern and you becoming really, really exhausted during this period.
i have been almost 5 years in THY and just waiting for a start date for another company in order to runaway from this **** place. just STAY AWAY from 737 fleet in THY (sorry for capitals)