IMHO...It all started to roll downhill in August1976...
When "New Sign or Resign" contracts were forced down the throats of happy and hard working Gulf Air expat.staff.
August 1976...When the Pilot Association (Union) was terminated and management and technical crews and engineering staff thus never got to communicate ever again.
I recall hearing "Pilot input is neither necessary, desired or required!"from the same operations manager (British) that pushed the "New Contracts" through.
August 1976..When the expats. pilots "Provident Fund (Pension fund) was closed" and pilots and company no longer were required to contribute to it.
August 1976...When a memo....
To Gulf Air expat. F/o pilots stated "All future Captains would be Gulf nationals"
If none were available BA or Cathay retired at 55y would be hired on 5year contracts.
Some were at 12year Captain pay increment.
This boosted BA index linked UK pensions with inflation at 14% to 22% a year.
This managed to upset nearly all the Gulf Air pilots..Captains and F/os.
I think around 80% of the expat F/Os resigned in two years after reading that memo.
So if that was managements intentions... that bit worked..however there do still seem to be some expat Captains around even after 34 years.
I feel with better management... Gulf Air... if they had managed to honour terms and conditions in expat. contracts... and also shown Zero tolerance to corruption in the many and various departments.... the present Gulf Air would easily now be bigger and more profitable and a better company to work for than EK.
So for me.... Gulf Air started to die and go down hill with the new "Sign or Resign" contracts in 1976.
From that point onwards my trust and respect and enthusiasm also slowly died. I saw what I considered mistake after mistake made leading to the dreadful A320 incident in August 2000....then that era and poison that started it all in 1976 was finally over.
Over in the way many of us thought it would... but hoped it would not.
Thankfully as I was retired at 60 in May 2000 so I was not there to witness the effect this crash had on the community and Gulf Air staff.
A Brand New era has began....several new management teams have already passed through...hopefully it will be better this time and lessons have been learned and it will not be allowed to happen all over again.
Last edited by 40&80; 24th Jul 2010 at 02:28.