Excellent Response Torallin. To Leftcoaster and all the other pompous, "my watch is bigger than yours, I'm a better pilot than you" crowd looking in from the outside and passing judgement on us "morons" here at SIAC. We, like you, naturally did as much homework as possible before signing up. We are afterall cut from the same mold, right? However, there is only so much information one can acquire in advance. One has to take certain things on faith as advertised by the company. One comes to a job with certain expectations and assumtions based on a previous job. Eg, approximately S$7,000 PPA. I have been averaging $2,000 less than that. "Free" home base travel. My RT ticket costs $60 in direct taxes and the entire value ($2750) of the ticket is tacked onto my taxable income. "Generous Medical Insurance". The premium the company pays is tacked onto my taxable income. $3250 of other non-disclosed benefits is tacked onto my taxable income. No recovery rights on trips dropped due to AOCS time limits that are reached through no fault of your own. I just lost a 10 day trip because I was 3 minutes over on the previous one. That's over $3,000 in lost wages. My reward. 10 days of standby with no assignment, no priority for assignment. How were we supposed to know this before signing on the dotted line? My "research" eg on this forum brought mixed results. No one ever posted some of the things I just did.
Don't get me wrong, it's not all bad. There is a lot positive about this job: SIN is a great place to hang your hat for a few years, the A/C is great to fly, the layovers/hotels are nice, the pace of the job is very relaxed, the guys you fly with are great etc...It's just that many of us had an EXPECTATION based on advertised benefits, implied benefits and a contract. We gave the company the benefit of the doubt.
Caveat Emptor!
PQ