Expat bashing at SIA
Its come to my attention recently, that there has been a spate of racially motivated incidents in Singapore Airlines, that are wholly inspired by local Singaporeans.
Recently, and still happening, a long standing expat captain (who is on LOCAL terms) has been the victim of a serier of hate mails, directed at him and his wife and kids. The instigators are those who for some reason, attribute some of the blame for SQ006 TPE incident to him. The history is that two of the pilots on SQ6 were never actually rostered for that trip, but went out of their way to gety onto it.The most notable was Captain Foong. Origionally, Capt XX, an expat was to do the sector, but was persueded to swop for another trip, by Capt Foong. Additionally, one of the F/O's had done a swop, as he wanted to meet up with a friend in LA. Capt XX has continued to receive hate mail in his mailbox at work, and telephone calls in the middle of the night, abusing him, his background and laying the blame for sq6 on him for swopping with Foong. Its was Foongs choice guys. Would the incident have happened if the flight had proceeded as origionally crewed? I think the SIA rostering is subetly smarter than it is perceived? How often do we get a all Singaporean "heavy" crew, that is not training? Think about it.
Just last month, an expat f/o on local terms, failed his command. This has not happened before. He was a twelve year F/O when he started. He was moved from the 747 to the A310, to do his command training. Compatable times for Singaporeans to train, are significantly less, by about 3 years. Why? Because, Singaporeans, and only Singaporeans are eligable for Lear Jet training, to increase their sector count to that approaching commant pool requirement.
So, if you are not a Singaporean, you have to be patient and build sectors the long way. The command trainee in question had done his time, and was finally selected. Singapore airlines lies to all local term expat f/os when they are interviewed, saying command time in 8-10 years. This isnt true, and is a hard pill to swollow after 12+years of false hopes.
Anyway, back to the point, our trainee, why did he fail?It certainly wasnt about his command ability. Simply, because Capt YY had remembered that 8 years previously, as an f/o, this guy had failed to show him the respect he demanded, by not running upto him in Cold storage(a supermarket chain in spore), shaking his hand, and introducing himself.The training captain had remembered this incident from years back,still bore a grudge, and took it out of this expat in his Sim command Loft. Singaporean training captains demand respect, and to not toe the line can have dire consequences.
So, the outcome is that our trainee has been relegated to A310 f/o status .The bum fleet in SIA, usually where the expats are given their first command.The Singaporeans however, go onto the B777/747-400, and although relativly incompetent, are passed by their training captain buddies.
To fail a command in SIA, is the end of your career there.There are still a few brave soles, who are still expat f/os in Singapore. Their equal seniority locals were skippers long ago. Its not a nice place to be now the local pilots are fingure pointing at the expats, for whatever reason, with its implied distane and ill will. I think we can all read the childish vitreole of some posters in this forum, towards contrary opinions to what they believe to be true.