I'm not a fan of the Dash, but aircraft type is way down my list of priorities.
For me it's a balance of pay and lifestyle, and neither are brilliant at Flybe. Pay has been done to death on here, and I would be amazed if management ever attempted to offer a package that compared with the big boys. The noises coming from BALPA on the current pay negotiations are not at all promising, and I suspect that whatever their expansion plans, management's attitude to pay and pilots is still very much 'small airline / training airline.' I would love to be proved wrong, however.
Pay would be less of an issue if it was compensated by a fantastic lifestyle, but unfortunately it isn't. For example, I'm currently on 2 days off. I got home from work at 23:00 on Friday night, and will leave the house again at 04:30 Monday morning, so my 2 days actually equates to one full evening at home. Repeat ad nauseum. Until recently we had quite a few short 2 sector days to sweeten the pill, but my base now seems to have joined SOU, BHX & MAN in getting some seriously long (10hr+) 4 and 5 sector duties. (And before the Airbus drivers jump in and tell us we don't know we're born, try a few of those in a cramped, noisy, challenging turboprop that's liable to bite you if you take your eye off it for 30 seconds). Increasingly I'm zombified by the end of the week. Again, I'm not optimistic about an improvement; lates to earlies was an issue when I joined the company, and still is. There appears to be unlimited capacity for prevarication and stalling, and it would take a major exodus to get their attention, by which time it would be too late.
Set against the above issues, the chance to fly an E-jet, while mildly exciting, wouldn't be enough to keep me (or, I suspect, many of my colleagues). It's really very simple – if the company fails to offer a competitive remuneration and lifestyle package, then once the opportunities start to appear, people will vote with their feet. T'was ever so.
Last edited by G SXTY; 25th July 2010 at 09:40.