Hold Pool
Received the email from Ezy to say that my details will held for 24 months from the time of assessment and there will be no external F/O's taken on in 2009 from the Hold Pool.
Reading between the lines I think we are watching the whole pilot recruitment process changing in front of our eyes. So much for all of us with Jet time and a bit of life experience! It all comes down to money and not the best person for the job! It's all about the bare minimum in terms of experience and criteria; and as long as those basics are met, why pay for an experienced guy, who would want a permanent contract and a half decent salary?
The attitude is take or leave it! If you've got a mortgage, wife and children, forget it! What the airlines want is guys paying for their own line training, type rating, etc and being paid peanuts, whilst living in a bedsit, or sleeping in their cars in the staff car park, as they don't have the money to have a decent standard of living. Most of them will be single, with little or no commitments, and that is perfect for the airlines.
Will BALPA step in and try to negotiate some kind of middle ground between experienced pilots and CTC/Cadet/ATP scheme type people is anyones guess. I think BALPA are powerless, if the airlines are working within the EU employment guidelines, and therefore they could employ whoever and do whatever they want.
I have been flying for an airline for only a few years, but already, all I have seen, are negatives. This global recession, is perfect ammunition for the airlines, to say that all these cut backs are necessary, and if the T's & C's are not eroded even further, that will be it and we will all be out of a job etc etc. The same with the oil prices in July 2008 etc. The airlines have seen a fantastic decade of economic growth since 1998 and apart from 9/11 which really only affected the medium/long haul carriers for a while, we have all seen as a casual observer, how much air travel has boomed. I don't seem remember all the T's & C's reflecting all the good times that we have experienced since the late nineties.
The managers continue to take their bonuses, and no matter what happens to the company, they move on to another airline and assist in messing that up for everyone concerned, whilst they continue to take their golden hand shakes and the rest of us (Pilots) scrap for a contract in eastern Europe or Africa to pay for a mortgage for our families, back home.
Maybe I'm old fashioned and I'm expecting too much from my current and future employers. Gordon Brown and all his cronies want us to work and get an education or training to keep us in employment, for all the obvious reasons, etc, however, when the training costs and personal sacrifices that we have all made are out weighed by the benefits, how are we meant to live in a modern Britain. I'm sure that I speak for the vast majority of us, that we all want to better ourselves, whether it be a nice house, car, or just a better standard of living for our familes or at least ourselves as individuals. We all have ambitions to move up the ladder of life, but if the Lo-co's and if the other airlines who follow their lead, in eroding everything that we have worked for; how do we move onwards and upwards, if all we get at the end of it, is a seasonal contract or we are replaced by guys who are willing to work for nothing, at any cost?
If, this is the future of aviation, well, where we all go from here, I just don't know? What really worries me though, is the MOL's of this world simply don't care about you and I. If, you like it you know what you can do etc. Great! We are just an inconvenience expense, who requires paying every month and training every 6 months. Call me cynical, but I really hope I'm wrong, and you can all right your threads in the future, and tell me how great the world of aviation is, and how I got it completely wrong.
S.