flash8,
surly not, you are not considered employed if you pay a company to offer you some flight hours. you have maybe a nice badge cliped on your shirt saying "first officer", but the contract you have signed, is a student contract.
If it was a real contract with a serious company, in the bottom of your contract you should read how much they pay you!if they do not pay you, you are not employed!
When you leave(after your 150-200-300 hours, whatever), you can not say you have worked, and you do not have unemployment compensation,in some countries by exemple, if you want have some cash ,you have to show your last 2-3 months salary receipts and a letter showing you have been fired!.
Under the SOP, only employees can have access to a cockpit, not student.
only employees can pass a security check for a company and only employees can be on a tarmac.
all procedures are in the SOP, and it is printed nowhere that a student pilot who pay a company is authorised to fly with passenger, be on the tarmac by exemple,(this time, the airport could be held reponsible if there is an accident around the aircraft).
again, this is not only my point of view only, but the point of view of the FAA .The FAA has already baned such practices years ago (with this famous school in Florida) I have heared, and I guess soon, the CAA will have to take an "effort" to change some rules in UK or Europe or they could face legal action if one day a plane go down and that we discover that flight deck members was not fully employed.
to keep it simple: an airline is not a school. An airline who accepts you because you have paid them(or you have paid a tierce company) to log some hours, is not authorized under their area of operations. In fact you are downgrading your commercial privileges to privat privileges(should I say student pilot?).
I do not agree with airlines making profit from us, if we do not stop them, one day you will pay for everything, landing fee, hotel, fuel, and PAX' tickets.All I can see , some airlines are breaking laws every single day and the CAA does not give a damn s...t!
have a good one!
Last edited by A320rider; 18th Dec 2005 at 18:13.