As a non-Swiss pilot I can confirm the xenophobic feeling within Switzerland and Crossair and (let´s not forget) Swissair. Instead of joining another alliance SR (and thus compromising a small part of national pride) SR had to do it all by themselfs and look at the result.
I am an EU national, so I am forced to be based in Basel but I can not live in Switzerland. EU nationals working for Crossair have to live either in France or Germany. Welcome to paranoia-land !
The fact that Switzerland is not a member of the EU, NATO or even the UN is truely a joke and again gives a bit more background information about the way the Swiss view the rest of the world. The only reason why Switzerland is as rich as it is, is because it launders money like no other country in the world, however they prefer to call it “private banking.“
So, now let´s look at Crossair.
Tabloid style 'grabs' of this kind are meaningless and devoid of any informed merit. I you have facts to back up your sour grapes, POST THEM, and we can debate the issues like professionals.
Posting negative things about Crossair is not a bright idea, especially on a PUBLIC forum. On the CCP forum (PRIVATE !) a lot of critisism was posted and somehow ended up being published in the Swiss tabloid Blick. CCP´s reaction : they closed down the forum for about one week. Instead of better checking who has been issued a password, CCP´s reaction has been to ban the use of an alias in order to tone down critisism ! The company culture itself is not very open towards critisism either, so where should people go when they have new, or different ideas about procedures ? This is very unfortunate because the current transition LX is going through would be perfect to change a few totally obsolete rules and procedures Crossair still has in place. Procedures that no longer belong in a Western European national airline ! A lot of foreign pilots have been pushing for different procedures for a long time, but the Swiss regard them as ´trying to take over´ instead of accepting this constructive critisism to make LX a better and safer airline.
The seniority issue of merging the seniority list of SR and LX.
Although there is no official proposal on the table, most probable result will be that the two lists will be horizontally merged and that the last portion will consist entirely of LX pilots, as the LX pilots corps is larger then the SR pilot corps. Now let´s look at who will be at the bottom of that seniority list. Not Swiss pilots ! It will almost entirely be foreign DE captains and foreign FO´s. We will be the first ones sacrificed if the ´new Crossair´ enters more turbulent economic times. Don´t count on Swiss LX pilots to come to our rescue either ! They tell you straight in your face that “Swiss tax money should not be used to subsidise foreign jobs“ despite the fact that many have helped the company continue to grow and have established a live here. As Hold at Saffa said :
Ex-Patriot employment will always carry elemental risk in respect of tenure.
Thank you for the support Saffa !
the LUG IGS procedure
It is still a total mistery to me why one of the richest countries in the world can not afford to build a decent airport at Lugano or Bern ! Why is there no ILS for runway 28 in Zürich, or ILS for runway 34 in Basel ? Too expensive, or maybe because then approaches will be flown over Swiss houses instead of German or French ? I suspect the later…
Switzerland truely is an island within Europe, if not the rest of the world, and (believe it or not) the Swiss are proud of it !
[ 17 December 2001: Message edited by: Robert Vesco ]