I've been trying to "play the ball and not the man" this last few days and this is the best I can come up with.
The JQ pilots really need to sit back and have a breather for a second and take it all in. Things have come a long way in the past 5 years but unfortunately their pay hasn't.
It was not all that long ago these blokes were flying a 1900D up and down the NSW coast, no autopilot and no flightie to bring the coffee. Next thing they'll be flying an A330 on international ops with 270 odd punters down the back.
The question that needs to be asked, has their pay gone up appropriately? Measly pay rises to go 1900->717->320. The A330 will be carry an extra 50% of the pax load on top of the A320, flying internationally in all sorts of conditions.
Good on em for such a meteoric rise and before any of you have a dig at me, I'm not criticising experience levels (I'm hardly in a position to do that!). That's not my beef and I don't think it's true anyway. All I am saying is that I fear in about a years time some of them will say: "It all happened so quickly, I'm worth more than this!!!"
The time to realise that is now!
TL