DHLAir wannabe? read this.
Thinking of taking DHLair up on that job offer?
there´s a few things you might want to consider first. People are leaving at an unprecedented rate. People who have only jujst commands under their belts are leaving withn WEEKS of their upgrade.
The reasons are many, but the main ones are:
Cockpit fumes. The 757s that DHLair have all came from BA and are amongst the oldest flying. They have always had problems with fumes, but recently the fumes problem has reached epidemic proportions. For the last tow years or so, the incdence of engine oil in the cockpit incidents has steadily increased due to the poor maintenance on these airplanes. Several lpeople have had to be taken to hospital and others are now suing DHLair because of their exposure to oil fumes. last months safety roundup had about 50 reported incidents in it! And those are just the reported ones. Some pilots are not reporting for fear of their jobs. threats have been made to pilots for decking airplanes that were producing fumes. I´ve had a couple and believe me, it is not nice at all. some pilots have had twenty or more in the last year alone! I´m glad I´ll never have to smel them again, anyway.
Because of the new commands leaving, DHL air are now going to bond newly made up captains. Nobody does that.
There´s a big push on to go to leipzig at the moment as well. One departing manager issued an e-mail telling people th eplan was to wind the EMA base down entirely in the next couple of years. They´ve already done it at Brussels (they are finishing in 2008) and despite management denials it looks like the same thing is going to happen at DHLair. Leipzig are welcome to it anyway as far as I´m concerned.
If you´re a fresh young new hire FO you will be many years (over ten, probably) getting your command as the average flying hours per year are less than 300 because of the nature of the business.
The atmosphere in the company is very bad indeed. Management , and in particular the upper management, seem to identify ways to antagonise the troops and take every opportunity to do so. They keep lists of people that are troublemakers and let that be known to them that they are on it.
In addition to all of this, the crew rooms are depressing and you will spend a lot of time in them (if management tell you the new ones are better, well, I´ve seen one "new" crew room and it´s still like a Gulag)
all this is just a sampling of the problems, but there are many others. Sure all airlines have their problems, but no other airline has the same difficulty with the toxic fumes issue, which is the main reason over 40 people have left so far.
If you do take them up on their job offer, best of luck, but my advice to anyone thinking of it is if you have any other offer, take it..