Big mustard is right, the bank loan thing went a couple of years ago, there is a bond you sign which if you stay for the 3 years means a free type rating.
Correct on the 25 mins turn arounds, as to the payscale adverts there were a lot of people in Flt ops who were extremely pissed off
with the dis-ingenuous adverts regarding pay, never mind those of us actually flying on a lot less wondering what they were talking about. The small print is the believable bit.
You also should consider that flybe is a fairly new company and they are changing all the time, by that I mean that you cannot consider Flybe the same company as the one before we bought Bacon. The company is twice the size and simply cannot afford the turnover of pilots from recent years. There is a definate feeling (imho) that the airline is maturing from the type of organisation that still thinks it runs a couple of sheds out of a portacabin into a professional major airline.
The recruitement process has changed beyond recognition with the online application, dedicated professional recruiters and the like.
We all have high hopes for the new enlarged CC.
I have flown military and major long haul UK and while the pay is not quite as good, I am very happy to be at home almost every night and not living out of suit case for most of my working month! Plus I get to handfly a lively aircraft rather than sit and watch an autopilot for 9 hours on end
Finally, there do seem to be a fair share of hasbeens flying for us that either can't or won't move on despite constant complaining (and if they did us all a favour and fO'd elsewhere it would certainly be a better place to work!) but even so we are growing rapidly, promotion is extremely quick and at the end of 3 years, having joined as a new fo out of training, if you are not knocking on or already promoted to Captain you should try another profession.
