Truthful,
At the beginning of this year I was not even an Ayla employee. I had been the Quality Manager and Deputy CGI (on less than half the salary figure you suggested). The academy had had its fair share of problems before I left in December, 2007, but it was growing and in pretty good shape; certainly, it was audited throughout 2007 to JAA FTO standards and passed easily. Then in Feb, 2008, the trouble really started!
I was paid (although not the figure you suggested, nor with the additional benefits you mentioned - I lived in the Rae'd Suites with the Oman Air students, hardly 5-star!), and brought back from Atlantic Flight Training in England where I was just settling in as COO, a reasonably highly paid job, to deal with some essential projects:
- Stabilize the Ground School after the (enforced) departure of the founding CGI, a poor decision that started the rot (3 very fine ex-pat GI's followed shortly after), and until a replacement could be found.
- The GF Approval, especially writing the Ops and Training Manuals after the guy tasked with the job (my replacement as Quality Manager) departed.
- The MPL syllabus
The result was that I spent most of this time away from Ayla, or hidden away in my office working on these documents, or on the road dealing with our clients. I had to be paid extra, of course, to have me leave the job at AFT where I could go home every weekend, and return to AQB, for what I thought was only to be a short period!
I was not directly responsible for running the training system at Ayla until I became Head of Training, which was 2 days before I quit, and that all happened when I was in Michigan = I did not spend 1 second at Aqaba as HOT.
In truth, I would have loved the opportunity to turn AAA around, I have a lot of emotional attachment to it, and especially to the fine groups of young people we attracted to the school; however, and without pointing the finger directly, you will get a flavor of the conditions under which we operated by reading and understanding the opinions of my former colleagues contained in the posts before this one. In fact, I offered to return as HOT to try to turn the academy around but my offer was declined, albeit politely, it must be said.
Those are the facts, habibe, you will find this thread full of regretful instructors and department managers who would have loved the opportunity to help AAA realize its true potential - it could have been the best in the region, at least! However...