Ok, slow down here folks ! I fly Saab 2000 for Crossair and let me tell you that we ALSO have slots ! And lot’s of them ! Our Natel (mobile phone in cockpit) always seems to make that all familiar beeping sound of receiving an SMS, stating the next slot. If we DO NOT call ZRH delivery 10 minutes before CTOT with PAX on board ready to start, we ALSO lose our slot and go back to the end of the line. Maybe because we fly a lot out these airport (logically) it SEEMS that we get a special treatement, but we do not. A typical days work at LX is fighting slots on our way out, and fighting slots on out way back home.
As far as xenophobia is concerned you can say that they are a bit odd, to say the least. Nevertheless they did give me (a Dutch national) a flying job for which I am very thankfull. Most other EU member states hide behind licence conversion problems and language barriers in order to avoid hiring a foreign national. Examples ? Try to find work in Spain, France, Italy, Greece or Belgium if you don’t speak the local language (s) and have a ton of hours in your logbook and Germany, which does not accept EU JAR-CPL’s, unless you do an expensive conversion.
Gastarbeiter/cheap pay ? Maybe, but there still are Dutch airlines (KLM exel and almost bankrupt BA$E airlines/a BA franchise BTW !!) that require DFL 70.000,- to 95.000,- for a type rating on a EMB 120 or ATR 42 and pay FAR less then Crossair pays me AFTER having paid for my type on the Saab 2000.
