TinFoilhat2The issue is a sizeable portion of those who join regional carriers have no intention of staying at all, they want to fly heavy metal as soon as they can and it has nothing to do with terms or conditions at the regional. Nothing wrong with that at all, we all have our aspirations, but what makes us think we don’t need to accept the bills we’ve built up for the airline that have effectively been used as a stepping stone?
I’m all for keeping our t&c’s acceptable but in this case I struggle not to side with the airline. Someone has joined, taken advantage of an airline who were willing to give them their first break and paid their rating (they absolutely don’t have to in the current climate for low hour pilots) that likely allowed them to even get the experience before the airline wih the heavy metal would even look at them, then it’s acceptable for them to just wander off? Especially for airlines that don’t deduct the tr from your salary and are trying to be ethical when others are charging 50k for the rating and line training, i think this is really poor form. Where is the encouragement for an airline to pay for the tr of young pilots in future who can’t afford it up front? If everyone ran for the hills there wouldn’t be an airline on the planet with a half competent financial department that would pay for anyone’s rating, then we’d all come on here moaning that no airline is willing to sponsor new aviators for the tr after they’ve forked out on an ATPL. Well who is to blame when we threw it back in their faces everytime they tried doing something even half ethical.