Going to China on A320 with family
Hi there once again,since i keep getting questions about how it was there...here you go
after having read "Flying Upside Down"and having laughed my arse out i can tell you,having been there, that is all true and by all means!!!!
My 2 cents about going to the dragon's land working for Hainan,BCA or one of their subsidiaries.
Good:
Whatever is advertised about money it is true,money is good. Some cities and places in China are really nice and the general concept that the place is bad and polluted is no longer true,at least on the east coast.
Bad:
Company culture is really bad,working environment is not healthy at all.Backstabbing is normal business.
The company will own every single minute of your life.That means You will have a weekly roster with 36 hours rest in 7 days.
You will fly 95 hours a month with no off days fairly distributed to allow you a minimum of social life. Crew control will give you as many flights as possible to make you fly up to the maximum per week.
You will see your family for few hours early in the morning or in the afternoon for 6 days a week, forcing yourself to sleep few hours after a night flight to be able to enjoy your loved ones .
Company meetings with attendance recorded, if you don't go expect something.
You could be sent for 5 to10 days a month to fly from another base because again you get paid a lot of money so they own you and they must keep you busy.
If you are about to reach the maximum hours during the 3 months period they will give you all short flights instead of long ones just not to give you more days off.
Flying in China is very easy gents, you always get a lot of fuel and as soon as some weather appears they will start including at least 1 hour of extra fuel on your flight plan.
You will be flying many times 5 , 8000 feet below your cruising level because of atc restrictions.
The bad side is that you will get massive delays during summer and your roster will not be changed next day.
Most likely they will move your next check in time to make you legal to fly your next duty and if you report to crew control that you are tired, they will tell you that they have no crew to cover your flight.
Most of the FO's do not speak English and will try(right try) to act as pic just because the company told them not to trust you,then they screw up and it will be on you since they will lie to the management to make you accountable for what happened
Sim and flight training:There is no standardization among most of the instructors. Each instructor has his own way and there is no feedback during your training because nobody speaks english so you sit down start playing the video game until it ends and see how it goes.
Line training: the instructor switched the bloody wx radar off during approach with bad weather beside the airport "because wx radar is not healthy"
Just for the airbus guys...with a "terrain ahead pull up"warning triggered in IMC at night and memory item applied the instructor said that i should have disregarded it because i had a map shift...
The strategy is to put as many failures as possible with a lot of xwind and turbulence to end up flying a holding pattern or a vor approach in alternate law or an ndb approach in direct law with30 knots xwind, wet runway and a gear collapsing as soon as you touch .
A lot of raw data flying but ask for radar vectors and they will not give it to you.
If you come from a flying background were you had a lot of manual flying and a good instrument flying you will have no problems at all.
The sim can be used as a way to kick you out or punishment in case you did something bad like refusing a flight after a long duty ,not attending company meetings,anything which the base managers think could be a threat to their positions etc.
The company way of thinking ,according to the hundreds of email you get every week, is that since you get paid a lot of money you must be always on the edge (random oral checks at the briefing room,first officers writing monthly reports about you and you name it.)
If you fail a sim, as per caac procedure, they will demote you as first officer with 40% pay cut for some time , then you will have to go for a captain sim check again.
My honest advise is do not trust them because they will never be straightforward.
They might not like you and keep you on training and training pay for ever until you realize that is better to leave.
We had guys who failed 3-4 times on training pay for one year,some of them decided to stay because money was still good.
If you hold a tre,tri or chief pilot position do not mention it on your application because you will be seen as a threat by local instructors and managers of your base and they will fail you anywhere during training.
Company attitude toward expats:A few people will like you and will be open minded. Most of the others for various reasons (money of course is one of them) don't want you there and will try everything to stab you so be careful.
Beware of most of first officers because they are the company eyes and ears, a few of them are honest and really nice to fly with. Since we learn from our mistakes my final advise is go there if you desperately need money, if you are either single or with no children or if you can hold your breath and work like a dog with no rights during your contract tenure.
One month on one month off is the best compromise at the moment for family guys but they can squeeze you more because since you will have one month off they can make you flying a lot more (270 hours in 90 days you do the math)
That's what i have seen folks, dignity and respect are priceless for me
Last edited by tommyknock; 23rd Oct 2019 at 05:49.