Originally Posted by
tomuchwork
I received confirmation today - Xiamen indeed stopped captain recruitment(don't know if general or just expat).
Now the agency offered me to try "Lucky Air", apparently a "nice" outfit, they seem to be "nice" to foreigners(lol). Pattern offered are resident, 6/4, 6/2 or one version with 182 days of leave/year(so you can create your own 4/4 or whatever). Only Base seems to be Kunming?! How is that for commuting?
Some info about this company? Give it a shot or stay clear? The agency offers as well to check for other china airlines if I want. Any suggestions?
Money wise they anyway seem all to be the same. Commuting around 13-14k USD/month plus some housing and travel fees paid.What the hell is an "oil saving bonus"? You seriously get a bonus if saving some fuel?
Flying in PRC from quite few years, albeit in another equipment. Just few short considerations according to my experience ( 2 airlines, 2 contracts, now on 4/4 and happy with that).
1. I would never consider any contract like "xxx days off": it means you have to request your vacations and generally management has the right to refuse them (which they normally do). It means you are going to stay at home in low season and work a lot in high season, i.e. the 4 weeks for Spring Festival, the first week of October, the first week of May, from June to September.
2. Kumming is nice....for people used to chinese lifestyle. I would never choose it. Commuting isn't easy from there.
3. All the contract seems to be the same but....devil is in the details so don't just rely on the single A4 spreadsheet with the retribution syntesis: there is a lot of stuff hidden behinf it (taxes, training pay, training lenght, and so on).
4. This is the most I can say on a public forum; just my advice: complete a deeply research and try to collect all available informations..
Happy landings.
JF