...so what're you doing there ? Just makes my point.
That said, I think Homing Pigeon's post is pretty fair and unbiased. It's particulary relevant to the issue we were discussing, unlike Mjbow2 who's off on a rant, which was the difficulty that new non African pilots have with Africa. AirServ management is stuck in the middle : they know they cannot condone different standards, especially on an N registered aircraft but they've been around and also know that 'this is Africa,' and it's not for sissies.
Often puts their pilots in an impossible position. I've seen one rant for twenty minutes, making a series of very valid but totally impossible points before resigning in a huff, when the Chief Pilot tried to make him see the reality of the position. I actually sympathised with the AirServ pilot for feeling 'set up' but he was unwilling or unable to see that inflicting America on Africa (or anywhere else for that matter) ain't going to work.
Regarding:
'For example, when the contractor aircraft is grounded for eight weeks in a row due to its inability to send parts to keep it fixed,'
the other side of this story ( I am not saying which is truer) is that the AirServ pilots deliberately sabotaged this contract by grounding the aircraft for a ridiculous series of trivial issues until the contractor had to bring the aircraft home. Again possibly, the duality problem cos the SA pilots were happy to fly the aircraft.
Mjbow2, are you still there then ? I know full well what happens in the AirServ African operations and if you read back over the posts you'll see we were refering to how long it takes to bring newbies up to speed, not experienced pilots to 'relearn' old prop and turbo prop practices.
On the financials, I stand my ground. Yes, take a break and put something back if you must but don't pretend it's for any other reason than to make you feel good about yourself. The best of the best don't fly turbo props around Africa for a pitiful salary that they moan apart and go out of their way to ground aircraft for the tiniest snags. At least not for long. Of those that do MOST of these folk have no life outside 'sacrificing themselves for Africa', few interpersonal skills and no real understanding of African life. North American and European view points don't help.
It's back to the duality of whether you want the job done or you want it not to happen while you wait to do it by the book.
Seems you are letting the passion that lead you to do whatever you do/did for AirServ cloud your logic a little. Unfortunately that's true of many NGO operations and defeats the object of their good intentions. AirServ is not the worst in that respect but WITH EXCEPTIONS, the quality of pilot is inferior WHEN IT COMES TO the particular attitude and skills required to get the job done in Africa. This is mainly the ability (willingness) to understand that there are other ways of doing things than the 1st world way. Does that satisfy you a little ?
Tokoloshe, you make my point. AirServ is 'holier than thou' but always finds a way to make the bent aircraft their pilots created somebody else's fault. Again, this underlines HP's insightful comment about the duality of an FAA type organisation trying to do something productive without ever (?) having an accident or compromosing on eg. MEL - it can't be done in Africa nor in many of the places where AirServ most wants to operate and to be fair, is most needed.
Bafanaguy - can you live and work in a duality ?