Originally Posted by
Chocks Away
There's no "fast track command" at QR. You join the queue of many others who joined earlier and have the company mins already, Yes they need a lot of crew, so does EY as you say and EK (& Ethiopian, Jet, Ryanair NAS etc etc).
EK have had many aircraft rotated through being parked-up, for over a year now, due short flight crew and flighties! 500 crew short on 777 fleet alone without accounting for needing new recruits. They're even employing turbo prop guys now, they have dropped their minimums so low in desperation. EY quickly following behind with shortages. Now SV are getting 3 new aircraft / month from Dec'16 (yeh I know all about the dribble about retiring 772's etc but it's not a 1 for 1 swap, they need many of them still flying longer, if they are to reach their 2020 goals!)
Now do the crewing figures. We may be surplus on one or two fleets right now but SV are going to be short crewed next year and from then on... UNLESS they get better utilisation of local crew and changed work ethics (& we know what the chances of that are). That also entails a more efficient less corrupt crewing / rostering department (fat chance of that!) such as the Jepp bidding system promised over a year ago now. Also, many of the 400 ex MAS crew either aren't turning up or are resigning to return home to B737/A330/A340 gigs with MAS/Batik/Malindo etc and that will compound the problem further.
With the flood of Memos out before the new CEO arrives in Jan'16 there's a lot of change to "tidy up the place". Let's see what the New Year brings.
"Just keep Swimming, Just keep Swimming ..." :-)
This forward looking post was made almost three years ago. How have the things mentioned here panned out at Saudia?