Air Asia's Stripes
Salaries are well below industry average but good for local or regional pilots. The arguments you will hear are about cost of living. Locals and Asians are willing to live in places where most Westerners will not consider – hence the disparity. Locals can live on $500-$800 monthly housing. Europeans and Americans will live in “modest” neighborhoods and home rentals will cost you about $1500-$2000 a month plus utilities. The term “modest” is by Western standards and would be considered “upper class” by KL local standards – i.e. Setia Eco Park.
AA provides no benefits as other foreign carriers. No school allowance, no housing allowance, no transportation allowance, no parking, uniform or anything. Many say Air Asia is a low cost airline but there are many low cost airlines in India, Asia and the Middle East that do have all those things – so consider the situation. There is low cost and low class!
You can see from their attitude toward interviews the company is cheap: either brought on by arrogance or lack of thoughtfulness. During the interview the company will not pay for the hotel, even though they own it themselves. Wasting your time is possible and of no concern to the HR Department. Overall the company is as cheap as it gets from planning to operational. And in many cases the left hand does not know what the right hand doing. And now they have started defaulting on loans around the region.
This company makes their pilots pay for their own parking when at work (and it is not cheap). The major highways are toll roads and also not cheap. Expect to spend about $400-$600 US per month on tolls and airport parking. The AA Terminal is not located on the train line and difficult to get to, so public transportation is out of the question (unless you want to leave home 2 hours before check-in). Remember, this management does not think there is anything wrong with their Airline Captain standing on a metro and trudging between terminals on a cramped, stinky bus.
Others will say KL is cheap, but not really. Sure when compared to Singapore, yes it is, but when compared to other places it is about average. Homes are not cheap if you want to live in a descent community as already explained. School is extremely expensive if you can get your kids into one. Forget a car. If you have one you cannot bring it into the country (well without paying extremely high rates possibly greater than the cost of the vehicle).
KL is not that safe. Yes it is safer than Harlem in New York but worse than Munich in Germany. Crime does exist from minor (theft, scams and breaking and entering) to violent (murder, rape and ferocious assault). Tensions are always under the radar between Chinese, Malay and other ethnic minorities as well as Christians, Muslims and Buddhists.
But the best indicator is the pilots that are hired and the qualifications the company requires. A few years ago only A-320 Type Rated Captains with a couple thousand hours in type were considered for DEC. A little over a year ago it was lowered for Captains to having a Type Rating in the A-320 with a couple hundred hours in type. Now they are hiring non rated Captains with any time – and it will continue to lower.
This fact says everything about the company. It is willing to lower to the lowest common denominator rather than evaluate the question why they can no longer entice the qualified people. Please do not misunderstand my statement. A B-737 pilot is a good pilot but not for as an A-320 DEC (and vice-a-versa). A DHC-8 is also a good pilot but even less qualified to walk right into the left seat of an A-320.
Airbus A-320 pilots (especially TRIs and TREs) are in high demand around the world. Unless a pilot is from Malaysia there is no reason for the pilot to join Air Asia as a B-scale pilot. The pay and bonus packages in Asia, India, the Middle East and even Africa are far better for experienced pilots and while KL is a nice city, there is little difference for the expat than many other cities around the flying world.
But if you have no time and no other options – well it is a place to take a chance. But don't expect things to get better once you are there because the Tiger has already shown his strips and don't complain about getting bitten over and over once you are in the jungle.