AOA's position

[AeroBoss]

The Rules of Engagment

My dear chaps and chapesses,

I thought I would be pompous enough to air my views on all this as some of the people here seem to be convinced they are involved in a battle they can win. Some of the young blood on this forum are obviously in need of a reality check in the form of a TIA explanation. (This Is Aviation!)

Before I start, remember I have the best of intentions and that shooting the messenger will get you nowhere apart from releasing some of that testosterone that you young men should sell on eBay. You would make a fortune, take 20 years unpaid leave give the fingers to CX and live a long and meaningful life at last.

I am merely going to pass on advice that was given to me in the 80's by a senior manager of a well known French/Dutch Major airline (who by the way also think they are the best airline/aircrew in the world despite the fact that they break an aeroplane every 3 years... so you see Cx' arrogance has got a long way to go yet...).

Now he was not a visionary or some financial guru, he just had some common sense and had been in aviation long enough to know how the big game of chess was played.

The rules are these,

- You will be an employee (understand "shaftee")
- Never turn down a command or you will regret it (sounds familiar)
- The market has a 7-10 year cycle so if nothing has happened to you for 7 years and something comes on the table grab it with both hands
- Prepare for a career in the RHS with short spells in the LHS so never spend more than FO pay, EVER!
- Never work for a subsidiary company because when consolidation comes around these guys are always shafted (he knew, he was a shafter)
- Never complain about commuting because we managers hate it when a guy signs on the dotted line to be based somewhere and then cries that the commute is costing him his life, cash and health.
- Never move house for a flying job. The job has to come to you, if not it is not good enough and you will find another one.
- Do your job well because One strike and you're out and your family name will be remembered forever.
- Have a good life outside work otherwise you'll go bonkers.

This my fellow shaftees is the oath that you took when you decided to be a commercial pilot.

Furthermore, as far as CX is concerned, it is no different than other airlines. It is a rogue airline with rogue accounting practices partly because it is the way they are, and partly because it is the way they have to be to survive. (look at the name of the well "respected" carriers involved in the price fixing fiasco which is by the way much more unexcusable than the fuel hedging issue). Hell, I used to fly for an airline who was sending late rush bags via limo to passenger homes charging a fortune and funny enough the director of the chauffeur company was also sitting on the board of directors of the airline. Not to mention the brown enveloppes full of £$ etc that we were flying to the channel islands. I'll stop as the list goes on forever. CX do it with HAECO and whatever else but "Hello", wakey, wakey, wellcome to the real world.

When you join CX you know that you are in no mans land (HK) and that you are in for a rough ride.

But make no mistake. Life is just as unfair in other pastures, only in a different kind of way.

All I will say is this:

- You always complain that CoS/pay never go up but as soon as one group of pilots gets a "payrise" you bitch and moan about it because it was not YOU this time (€ vs £, when clearly for the poor European guys when the £ went down the tube, they took a beating. So they were only going back to what they were owed. Having said that, when they agreed to be paid in £, it is risk they agreed to without being forced by anyone but themselves. Anyway, battle won and instead of being happy for them, you called your mum because that was unfair bla bla bla...)
Same goes for the Freighter dogs who have been sh@t on for so long rumouringly going on B Scale (whether it materialises or not, perso I be amazed if that's the case). Rather than be happy for them you just b!tch like there is no tomorrow. Any improvement is just that, an improvement.

I am not being funny, but some of you guys are worrying about your commands for the wrong reasons: you are going to have to grow up first. CX is one airline where you need to be able to walk the walk not just talk the talk to get a command. They do not like angry young men who think God owes them a command.

- When you decide to go to HK, yeap, you take all the good expat stuff, along with complimentary housing allowance (aka golden chain), but you'd better get it right, just in case you can't make it back on the base. Some guys have turned down Pax commands and done their bit on the freighter instead, to protect their base. I don't think any of them regret it. "Happy wife, Happy life", "it's not all about $$$" and that sort of crap...

- A Scalers...Well Well Well. Actually, I would say 99% of them are lovely guys who had the gutts to move to HK when the place was really anything but this buzzing cosmopolitan city that we know today, and you could not get back to Londonistan in 13 hours flat 4 times a day. They have made money and good for them. They tought they would retire at 55 but know they can work to 65. Again an improvement as most of them want to stay beyond 55. Just stop insulting your seniors! The fact that you were born 20 years too late really has nothing to do with them! Just don't fall in the trap of stereotypes.

- Freighter commands out of seniority... Really? So when these notices to crew came up and said do you want to fly the 400 in the LHS, did it say in reverse seniority order? If it was not going to be cheap, you would have had another ASL fiasco. It has to work for managment, not for you. But some of you are to good to accept to fly rubberdog sh!t I suppose...

...I am sure a lot of you hate me and quite frankly I don't care. I will only like you back because you have the gutts to say so (albeit without stating your name). We are all aviators fulfilling our passion in a hostile environment, so be it. They will never take away from us breafast over the Alps or Sunrise in ANC in the Summer. That's why they hate us.

Don't fall in the trap. Don't turn on each other, you give them amunition to say that we are overpaid premadonnas etc...

In a nutshell, turn their pirate ways to your advantage, because quite frankly they don't give a stuff about 20 or even 2000 unhappy pilots ("we fired more than 50 guys, CNs and FOs and the airline didn't stop" quote unquote).

Be brave in the flight deck, not on Pprune and people will respect you for it. A friend of mine was diagnosed with leucemia at age 23, believe me he would have accepted a 2 billion percent paycut to get rid of that crap. Put things into perspective for goodness sake. (I am sure one of our late young fellow pilots and his family would love to be faced with the dilemma of age 55 right now)

I am not saying don't fight but be responsible for your actions, be happy for the guys who get a good deal and try to be one of them, and only then will you get respect from your peers.

This was probably my first and last post, (I can hear the sigh of relief from a lot of you), I am now standing by with my helmet on. Good luck guys, fly safe, take care of your family first. Hell to them, love to us.

Cheers
AB