Yes
Yes to strike from me too.
In response to the poster who asked what's wrong with Flybe T&C's it's hard to know where to start:
Roster pattern 5x4 sector days on, finish 22.30 Friday night, Sat+Sun off but start work 06.00 Monday, thus unlike an office worker you don't get Friday night because you're working and you don't get Sunday night because you ought to go to bed at 20.00-21.00 to get up at 04.00am on Monday morning for your early shift. Now most of us don't go to bed at 20.00, we go to bed at 22.00 or 23.00 to try and have a half decent weekend and just fly the aeroplanes around on Monday morning with 4-5 hours sleep. I'm not sure that ANY other airline in civilised world has such a brutally short weekend. Wanna go away to visit friends/relatives/take the missus to Paris for a weekend? - forget it the weekend is too short... The resulting fatigue from this relentless rostering practice in the busiest bases causes people to feel utterly burnt out and genuinely fatigued.
Basic pay - For both Captains and F/O's is way below the market rate for other comparable airlines such as Air Berlin/BMIbaby etc - Expect to be earning £35k after becoming SFO and working for 5 years as an airline pilot (including Flight pay) - that's £10k a year less than a train driver starts on... Expect to be paid as a Captain what a good company pays its F/O's - £55k.
Flight duty pay is paid at £1.91 an hour less tax, no sector pay - hasn't changed in years. So if you're a Captain and taxed at 40% and you work an extra three hours doing two extra sectors you'll earn £1.91x3hrs=£5.73-40% tax - about £3 for three hours extra work and two extra sectors - it's way less than most paper rounds pay schoolboys per hour and beyond a joke.
The crew food is utterly appalling and is sourced from suppliers who seem to specialise in almost out of date fat laden muffins, sandwiches with the worst quality ingredients - cold cheap sausage with ketchup and mayonnaise anyone? - or maybe you'd like the egg florentine - 2 day old egg mayonnaise with cheap cheddar stirred into it to add a strange piquancy to the flavour.
As a first job it's obviously better than nothing and the training is genuinely very good and you will fly with some really nice people. The flying is fun by airline standards - a good mix of fairly short routes to keep the interest level high and the skill levels up. Flybe is a company that could be a really good place to be if the management wished to make it so - it's just a shame they don't.
DP