NSF........ i have asked you previously to explain how these people are different. Your company, due to the CRUD TRAINING COMPANY has been instrumental in even allowing P2F to exist. If the candidates that are there now are from the pool of "pilots" that are actually P2F "cadets" who have been languishing on the dole for the past 8 months......... thats still P2F products you are flying with........ even though they have been offered a package that would make a burger chef at Mac Donalds walk out.
You might have your disagreements with whats going on with your employer but you only actually mentioned going on strike when it affected you
I was most disappointed to discover that we are employing CTC pilots as Line Trainers too - that simply is robbing an easyJet Captain of a Training Captain's job. The bottom line is that this is a line too far for me. All I have to do is receive the strike papers in the post and my answer will be yes
BALPA must be really happy to have a membership that so wantonly announces under what circumstances its membership will stand behind it....... "its now affecting me.........help!"
I have been flying since i was 18. I have loved every minute of it my first solo was on 26/3/86, in an OATS Tomahawk. I was a "self-improver". Since then i have flown Cargo, Corporate, Presidential, on demand charter, Airlines and got so p****d of with whinging whining pilots that i gave up the airline thing. Im in a really happy place, working along side some of the very best "people" i have ever been around. I am their boss. There is a mutual respect from the lowest rung of the ladder to the highest. Everyone is happy.
Every company could be the same, except for one denominating factor........the Pilots that populate the flight deck. Your quote above is exactly why your employers are eroding your T's & C's......... because until it affects you personally, you're not interested............ where as in our company its "does this affect the company?" If you are not company people, you have nothing to attach any allegiance to, except yourself. And therefore you wont do anything about any erosion of T's & C's until it affects you personally and so your union, my union as well by the way, hears about stuff going on in the airline but because of the total apathy of its members, is powerless to do anything. Last time i checked, BALPA didn't have a division that looks out for NSF!!!! You need to take those blinkers off, my friends. Its not all about you.
Come October 2011, i will have possessed a Professional Pilots Licence for 25 years. I feel privileged to have done so. My old man was a Pilot. We have over 50 years of combined aviation experience between us and i have a son, who one day may want to be a Pilot also.......... but its a different world and our profession is different now and my opinion is the reason it is different is because of the selfish, egotistical, spineless, apathetic, eunuchs that call themselves Pilots. Those that bitch and whinge about stuff but do nothing. Nothing, because they are individuals looking out for themselves. That is the true cancer of this once great profession....... not the tough talking, business people that are now the CEO's. You NSF, you do not stand up for the profession, you stand up for yourself. There are so many more like you. Its impossible to represent you. And this profession is all the worse for it.
And you know what, none of the erosions of your T's & C's affect me personally............ but they affect the profession and thats why i want to make a stand........ a stand against eroding this profession further..........maybe leave something behind that my children and yours may be proud to be a part of........... BUT as long as you people keep shooting the messenger rather than the message, its going to be a VERY difficult cause to fight. And my fight, right now is the P2F schemes because the only way to make this profession great again is to fix it from the bottom........... and like a pyramid, unless those at the top support those at the bottom, the bottom crumbles away and before you know it, the top is now the new bottom. As long as we have 5000 hour pilots sitting on the dole and 250 hour pilots sitting in the flight deck, things need changing.
This profession has survived as long as it has and newly qualified Pilots simply had to wait their turn. Not so long ago you needed 700 hours just to get a CPL in this country. Unless you did a fully approved course, you had to tow gliders, fly parachute aircraft, go to the states to build up hours or become a flight instructor to get those hours. Now people seem to think they have a God given right to buy themselves a job with 250 hours and there are certain individuals making themselves very wealthy selling that dream. BUT its dangerous. The US has just raised to 800 hours the minimum required to work for an air carrier. Are they so much worse in the US than here? Are they less capable? Or have they realised that there is an inherent danger in having newly qualified Piper Seneca Captains flying A320's. And because this has been countenanced by the selfish, egotistical, spineless, apathetic, eunuchs, this cancer will spread itself to the MIGHTY Left hand seat........"oh isn't that just beginning to happen?" Perhaps the future is there for all to see.
NSF whatever you do today, enjoy it, i will. I mean nothing personally. After all NSF is just a handle on a forum.
God Bless
GW