I take no joy from the downfall of Emerald. How could you? There are a lot of very worried people and I have every sympathy for them.
The only thing I'll enjoy is if MOB gets a kick in the ar*e and the show carries on rolling without him, but I very much doubt that'll happen.
I didn't leave under the best of circumstances, but at least I had the balls to stand up for myself and not give in to the enforced mediocrity at JEM. I thought the place was a hole, so I made my feelings clear.
To be honest I hated working there and didn't feel my life was worth risking for people like MOB.
Getting into knackered and usually unservicable a/c, going into poor weather with extremely poor training, no support, exhausted crews, engineers not allowed to buy parts and very harrassed head office staff. It's a miracle there weren't any disasters.
It's a testament to the quality of pilots that you did get home at the end of the day. (I am not being melodramatic, I actually did start to fear getting into some of the machines since you would never know what would go wrong next.)
The final straw for me was being handed a piece of paper from the fleet manager who'd flown the a/c before stating that it'd taken 5 attempts to get the gear down, but not to write it into the techlog as the schedule needed to be kept on track........ The next day I completed my last flight for Emerald.
I wasn't ever going to be put in that situation again. (Yes, the signed note was passed on the the FOI.)
I decided to do something about it and that was to get out whilst I still could.
It was however, refreshing to see the support from all my colleagues at the time......
There were some notable exceptions, all of whom have left JEM and gone on to far better things.
So don't preach to me lagerlout. I got out with my record clean, a cheque in my hand and my conscience clear.
When I left over a year ago, the writing was very clearly written on the wall. I have expected this news for a long time and I don't even work there anymore.
What I'm saying on here is no secret, so take the time whilst you aren't working (but continuing to be paid) to go out and find another job. I did it without all the fanfare or tears. Sh*t happens and you just have to deal with it. It isn't pretty or nice and it definately isn't fair, but whinging won't help pay the bills.
Good luck all of you. (except MOB and AJ of course!)