You make my point for me beautifully. The NZ attitude is "well you b*ggered off while the rest of us had to instruct for years, so go to the back of the queue". Everywhere else, pilot selection is done on the basis of aptitude, skill, and EXPERIENCE.
It has nothing to do with delaying progression, and the only people that trot out that tired line are First Officers who feel aggrieved because they are not yet able to get a LHS job (or those who are yet to get an airline job).
It has nothing to do with "skipping rungs". I did my time instructing, just like everybody else. I chose a different path when it came to airlines, so according to you, Plas Teek, I should now be disadvantaged by being made to start again.
In the rest of the world, you select the best person for the job. A career doesn't start and stop whenever you leave these shores. It is ongoing throughout your life, and most employers recognise that. You don't find Brit surgeons being made to start as interns, or managers brought in by the likes of Airways Corp or the CAA made to start off their NZ career by making the tea.
Any Kiwi has as much right as any other Kiwi to be working in NZ airlines, and selection should be done on the basis mentioned above. Nobody has a "right" to a place in a queue. If you can't recognise the value to an airline of having very experienced captains - from diverse backgrounds - then you don't know jack about aviation.
Anyway, I knew it would be like this I so chose to do something else. Please explain, if you can, the value of the Air Nelson 50 hours recent NZ IF time. That one still makes me laugh.
By the way, a Convair would be great fun. The old ones are always a lot more fun to fly than the new ones. From a pilot perspective, I enjoyed the F27 more than the 737.
In case you hadn't noticed, Air NZ also created a low-cost airline. So now they have a standard airline model, a low-cost model, and a low-low-cost model. Or is that a full-fat, mid-cost and a low-cost model? Very confusing. Please explain their strategy to me...
The only reason that they are in the black is that they were tossed the $800-odd mill by the government. Without that, they'd be long gone. They have a similar advantage to BA, when they were handed all the aircraft, property and staff, and told to go make some money. Easy, when you get it all handed to you, and don't have to service a debt. Hardly fair to compare them to airlines that actually have to trade themselves out of problems.
When they are making as much as Easyjet or Ryanair, I'll believe they have a successful business model. Not holding my breath though.
Last edited by MOR; 10th Aug 2004 at 01:27.