Air Arabia - all you need to know about it (threads merged)

[W Weasel]

Come on Down!

Hey guys:

I come on and see tons of messages asking questions: I apologize to all of you. I can not answer all individually for, while being a pilot, I do have a life

For those of you that have an interview study; for those of you that had one – you know what you need. ABY is a great place, far better than EK or EY. NO you will not fly an A-380 here but a plane is a plane – show me the money! True we are getting bigger and that creates the problems with knowing each other, scheduling and operations; but it is still fun. When it is not I will be the first to tell the forum it is not!

I was fortunate to go through the growth of the 70s and 80s in the USA. That was a great time. Upgrades in 2-3 years. Well few of us have that opportunity to experience that in a lifetime not alone twice in the same lifetime. It is happening here and guys, it may change, but it is happening right now. Every day we go to work and something new (GREAT) is announced. The company made $100 million last quarter or we are buying 3 planes from ABC airlines (I believe we have more planes from Vueling than they have.)

Yes, yes, yes we complain about the schedule (roster) and the flying (I have 99 hours in June) but we never complain about the cash. My 99 hours pays 132 hours or about $5,200 above my guarantee ($12,000) not including per diem [which we don’t spend since we do day trips ($410)]!

Now think about this! We are allowed to fly 900 hours a year. Please multiply 99 hours in one month by 12 months? That’s right – you will fly about 8.5 – 9 HARD months a year and then what? Oh my gosh, I have to take 2-3 months off.

Yes assuming you take no vacation (45 days a year off) you will run out of time in 9-10 months unless you "slow down" the flying when you get close - it does happen. Take vacation during the year and it may extend the time you fly a year - your monthly time may decrease. Not necessarily, for this month I personally took 14 days leave (18 days off,) flew 72 hard hours (about 5+ hours a day) and got paid 91 hours.

Now I know guys will say you have to fly 30 days a month to make the big bucks. I suggest to those of you that believe that, you simply go to Airarabia.com and look at the schedule. You fly a Colombo, Sri Lanka out and back and it takes you 9 hours but you get paid 13.5 hours. Now don’t get your draws up for this is not the only flight. Over half of our flights are like this and pay 10.5 hours for a 6:15 flight or 12 hours for 7:25…etc!

So do the math – you are pilots – well pilots are bad at math but you are very good at cash. Math is cash and you fly 1 flight for 8 hours block (much more pay) and you have 96 hours over a 12 day period! Oh my gosh, I’m out of time in 9 months!

It works guys, hope to see you on the line. But as Dennis Miller says: “Then again I could be wrong!”

B&O