Hugh,
Your anti-American negativity is quite an debilitating to you, your arguments make you sound like somebody who was raised in a welfare home who never had to work, or juxtaposed had everything given to him and never had to work.
Be careful staring at instruments at 300 feet on your "instrument" flight below minima Mate, you never know what you might hit!
Anyone who has difficulty hanging on to a Dash 8 in the simulator shouldn't be down there unless it's VFR anyway!
I'm very happy to go back to Australia at least once a year, run our dot com, real estate holdings company and fly 14 days a month and bank a fortune, while we ski all winter and race motocross all Summer. As you can see, it's not a question of being stuck anywhere, but finding myself in fortunate circumstances and I happen to be married to a Yank.
I'll let this go now, but every time we have tried to fly on you guys out of Port it has totally ended in a shambles...every single time. This year when I took my three boys to New Zealand to ski, I thought about doing the Dash 8 up to Port to the farm, but finally decided on a rental car out of Mascot.
It's a little like the disclaimer on the mutual fund commercials, "Past performance does not guarantee future returns". People still buy mutual funds when the past performance has been good, because they anticipate a good return based on history.
I've followed Eastern through the 404s, the Bandit, the Jetstream 31s and the Dash 8. I've spoken at high schools in Port Macquarie and invariably I have to field an "Eastern" story. One that is not too different from any I have told here.
East West were never like that! We had courteous transmissions to students, relay of transmissions to Coffs when they were still an FSU and public displays of uniform and language that would be suitable in any home or state function.
Hugh, I'm sure you do a great job. You're obviously passionate about your job
it's just that I've never heard or seen any of the professionalism you claim here.
I'm more convinced than ever that Avis is a better bet.