Blackace27 Since you may be hesitant to take the opinions of those who joined before COVID seriously, let me offer you the perspective of someone who joined after the pandemic—without the privilege of experiencing the so-called “good old days.”
Quite a list of grievances Fredy. You must not know me very well, if you did you would know that I listen to all of the pilots. Even those from other agencies. My responses are meant to shed light on issues. I do not duck tough subjects.
THE HOTEL FROM HELL
I’ll skip over the interview and onboarding process for now, but just know this: you will be staying in one of the filthiest hotels I’ve ever seen. It’s disgusting. And before anyone asks, yes, I have photographic proof. But hey, maybe when you visit for your little meetings with AJX, Blackace27 they put you up somewhere else? Lucky you.
AJX does not put me up anywhere, I book my own hotel. I would not stay at the hotel you are speaking about on a bet. It is filthy and a dump in my opinion. AJX is well aware of how I feel I’ve been telling them about it for the last 2 years, ever since I first received complaints and pictures from the trainees. A few months ago, AJX started to look for another place to book. They recently found a brand-new hotel, one train station away (about 3-4 minutes) but when some trainees returned from their Boeing training in Singapore they asked to be booked back at the dump, thereby throwing my whole argument out the window. Don’t ask me why they did that. I don’t understand. For those reading this post, not familiar with the situation, this hotel is used for new initial trainees only (around 3-1/2weeks). After returning from Boeing training in Singapore another hotel is available but AJX will give the pilots a choice. Qualified line pilots stay at another brand new hotel a few blocks away. Stand by, AJX has another solution that will be announced shortly.
TRAINING: A masterclass in wasting time
“Training” is a generous term. It’s more of a prolonged endurance test to see how much time they can waste while making you feel like an idiot. No matter your experience level, they’ll go out of their way to remind you that as a foreigner, you are inherently less capable. Eight months of this nonsense—mentally draining, pointless, and topped off with a training salary so laughable it feels like an insult.
The training is too long. This is not for AJX only. My training in 1991 at JAL took over 7 months. This is a JCAB thing. The airlines have been talking with the JCAB about shortening the training for 30 years. I’m still waiting. The treatment given to trainees is not race-based although I understand why you would feel that way. Japanese trainees receive the same impersonal non-warm and fuzzy treatment. Japanese instructors are less like instructors and more like checkers. They don’t 'teach' as much as they check to see if you have learned the procedures and callouts. The training salary is too low. Improvements are in the works.
COMMUTING: Enjoy your monthly economy ticket
Love the idea of flying internationally in economy class every single month? Then this is the place for you. Otherwise, you can opt for a $2,000 payout instead—a number that, fun fact, hasn’t changed in over two decades. Adjusting for inflation? What’s that?
Not sure where you are commuting from Fredy but you failed to mention that many pilots take advantage of the contract provision to fly in business class on ANA. You have to be at an ANA city, or fly coach to that ANA city but if you choose this option, it’s quite nice. Lounge privileges too. If you opt to take the cash and commute in non-rev standby status to save money, it probably sucks. Not something I would do but to each his/her own.
DAYS OFF: Good luck getting what you asked for
• Used to get the days off you requested? Not anymore. Now, it’s a dice roll, and you’re likely to lose.
The system has changed and not for the better. All I can say is the pilots on the scheduling liaison group are working very hard offering more pilot friendly ideas to the ‘schedulers’. Many of these ideas are pretty alien to the ‘schedulers’ who may come to this job from other sections of the company with no scheduling experience at all. AJX recognizes that scheduling is the biggest problem that they have (I keep reminding them), and they are sincere about hoping to improve but clearly, they just don’t know how, given their inexperience and exposure to the Japanese way of scheduling and their inability to consider compromising productivity for better work/life solutions. Definitely a work in progress.
• If you’re one of the many who do back-to-back days off, enjoy losing 12 commuting days per year. And before anyone says “but you signed up for this,” sure, but that doesn’t make it any less absurd.
If the extra days were called days off I could understand your complaint but they are not called days off they are called commuting days. You get 2 commuting days off for traveling home per round trip. If you take 12 blocks of 10 consecutive days off, you get a total of 24 commuting days per year. If you take 6 blocks of 20 consecutive days off you get a total of 12 commuting days per year. So, unpopular yes, absurd no.
• They claim they’ll try to roster you with a late start on your first day and an early finish on your last. That almost never happens (in my experience). They have people commuting from South Africa and Europe starting duty at 7:20 a.m. on Day 1. Apparently, no one here has heard of jet lag.
If you know of anyone that this has happened to in the last 60 days, please let me know by PM. I’ve been told this has stopped.
VACATION: A brilliant scam
• You’re technically entitled to 24 vacation days per year. In reality, you’ll request them for months, they’ll ignore you, and then suddenly, they’ll tell you you have “too many” unused days and offer to buy them back—days you never used because they wouldn’t let you.
• Many pilots are sitting on 10+ unused vacation days because of this. Most of us didn’t come here for the money; we came for the time off. And yet, even that is a joke.
• Thinking of rolling over unused days to next year? Maybe getting a decent payout? Think again. Neither is an option.
Scam? I understand how someone might deduce that, if you have no trust in AJX. I do not think it is a scam, what’s more likely is just poor manpower management or poor route/flight planning. Same set of problems the schedulers deal with on the monthly roster. Poor planning and lack of vision.
HOUSING ALLOWANCE: Good luck finding a place
• Sounds great in theory—your own apartment in Tokyo! In reality? Good luck.
• Without a Japanese residence card, securing a lease is a nightmare. The Japanese rental market isn’t exactly welcoming to foreigners, and the company offers zero help.
• The alternative? Overpriced serviced apartments that eat into your allowance and you need to add the commuting costs. That’s another $200+ per month out of pocket.
• Oh, and since you’re based at two airports, enjoy constantly dragging your stuff back and forth between hotels, apartments, and transport hubs.
True, AJX does not provide any assistance in pilot apartment searches. They don’t have the manpower to do it but there are agents available to help (for a fee). It’s also true that a decent apartment may cause you to pay more than the 200,000 JPY per month that you receive for an allowance. I hear the same is true in Doha, Dubai and Riyadh. The recent increase in per diem to 13,000 JPY/day helps some. The alternative is to stay in company provided hotels which are decent (not the same one discussed above that the trainees are in).
SICK LEAVE: Hope you don’t get sick
• You get 0.5 days per month—a grand total of six days per year. After you reach 12, that’s it. No more accumulation.
Just FYI the sick leave maximum accrual is now 20 days. Japanese employees don’t call in sick. They take personal leave. That’s’ the culture. That’s why it’s hard to explain to them why pilots need more sick leave.
• Many pilots use vacation days when they’re sick to avoid taking a financial hit. Because yes, getting sick here is basically penalized.
CAPTAIN UPGRADE: Don’t hold your breath
• Used to be under five years to upgrade. Not anymore. With Direct Entry Captains (DEC) coming in, the internal upgrade process is slowing down.
• They’re cutting upgrades from 16 per year down to 8. There’s no official announcement (of course), but multiple Japanese instructors have confirmed it.
Nothing diabolical going on here. Before covid, pilots that were recruited had quite a bit more experience than the pilots currently being hired. Pre-covid, when a pilot’s seniority came up and he was nominated for CAP upgrade, no one blinked. Now pilots approaching the traditional time for upgrade do not have the same level of experience as previous pilots and AJX feels the need to put the brakes on for a while allowing pilots to gain a little more flight experience before they are put in the left seat of an international wide body aircraft. This makes perfectly good sense. However, this will eat some point cause a further imbalance in the CAP/FO ratio. That is why AJX is forced to go looking at DECs. Most of them will be older Japanese pilots and the number of DEC’s who will be hired will not appreciably affect upgrades amongst foreign contract pilots who reach a point where they are ready to upgrade. So, upgrades will slow for a short period until the new FOs build up a little more experience and then the upgrade program will go back into full swing. Probably in 2027.
DUAL BASE DISASTER: welcome to your commute from hell
• You will be based in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, meaning both Narita and Haneda. Sounds exciting, right? It’s not.
• Land at Narita at 4 p.m.? Great. You’re signing in at Haneda at 7:20 a.m. the next morning. These airports are 80 km apart. Taxis? Forget it— only for the japanese. Enjoy standing for two hours on a packed train. Just what you need after a long-haul night flight.
• Live near Narita? You’ll fly mostly from Haneda. Live near Haneda? You’ll fly mostly from Narita. Live in between? Enjoy an hour-long commute to every flight.
• The company offers zero support to manage this mess. No help with apartments, no commuting assistance, nothing.
Another real problem. AJX still refuses to consider what might seem to us as an obvious solution, that is splitting the pilots into separate groups. I don’t think this refusal to give in to an obvious solution is sustainable. Maybe when we see a new group of managers things will change. Granted this is unpredictable for now.
OFFICE STAFF & RULES: A special kind of useless
• The sheer number of unwritten “office rules” is staggering. None of them are in your contract, yet they will make your life miserable.
• The office staff? Let’s just say their attitude could fill an entire book. They will actively make your life harder while dodging any accountability. But I’ll save that rant for another day.
Too many rules is the common complaint. I don’t doubt that it is difficult to keep up with them but at the same time I wonder how many pilots actually read the rules that are posted. Pilots sometimes are easily angered when they come across a rule that they don’t like. Just because a rule does not favor your particular situation doesn’t mean it is unfair.
But yeah, there are a lot rules and yeah they are hard to find online. As for the office staff. No one likes to have their requests denied and if they react strongly the Japanese staff may respond in kind. While I can picture some tough exchanges between pilots and staff, there are an awful lot of really nice people in Japan and at AJX and I'm sure you can remember people you didn't get along with at your former airline.
Final Thoughts
Is this the worst place on Earth? Probably not. But is it a good place to work? Definitely not.
Keep in mind, this is a contract job—but that piece of paper you signed? It’s as good as worthless.
You may not like this place and you may not like how the contract is administered but you can’t say the contract is not followed. I hear a lot of complaints but none of them involve violations of the contract. My experience is that the contract is followed scrupulously and maybe even too scrupulously. There are many instances where not following the contract on even very minor things would be mean a good result for a pilot but they won’t do it citing fairness to other pilots. That is frustrating, but a good example of their attitude about the contract. Saying it isn’t worth the paper it is written on is a bit over the top.
If you can tolerate the nonsense I’ve outlined here, then sure—come and have fun.
Look there are many things you can point to that are frustrating here and I won’t say it’s perfect but there are several highly skilled professional pilots who have stayed here for the better part of 2 decades and while they too are sometimes frustrated, they stayed. Again, things are not perfect, but a lot of frustration is the product of a pilot’s expectations. If you want to join a company that is going to wrap their arms around you and give you that warm and fuzzy feeling and bend over backwards to meet your expectations, this ain’t that place, but they do follow the contract. Since the recall began in APR of 2022 there have been several significant improvements. Does it all happen overnight? No, it seems to take forever but improvements have occurred and I can tell you confidently that it’s not over yet. Do they meet everyone’s expectations? No, it’s not like before.
One thing you failed to mention is that the flying itself is very gratifying for any professional pilot. That you can’t deny. Clean airplanes, meticulously maintained, dispatching and operations support is excellent and everything accomplished in a very professional manner.
So there is a great deal of satisfaction gained in that regard.
Last edited by Blackace27; 23rd October 2025 at 23:38.