$12,000 USD fines...
Ladies and Gents,
I can confirm the initial thread statement is true and correct.
A very sad situation that has little logic to it. The gent involved is a foreign A320 captain that was involved in an altitude bust, no TA/RA's were recorded. There is no need to take fault away from the pilot itself, but so as to give a better understanding of what happened on that day I suggest more current Spring pilots add their bit to this thread.
The gent involved was never taken off flying following this event, thus implying he is in no way a threat, there was a minimal investigation by the airline and the results (mainly the radio transmission recordings) have not been made available to this pilot despite his insistence and repetitive requests.
To the best of my knowledge this is a situation that has occurred in the past, in similar circumstances with local pilots. The main issue here is the disproportionate "fine" imposed by the airline to this individual, $12,000USD, versus RMB2,000 for the similar incident were a local pilot was PIC.
This is an abuse of the contractual agreement and is set to be a strong message from the airline to their foreign pilots, mainly and very possibly under pressure from the CAAC.
The set up, non adherence to SOP's, HIGHLY non standard ATC instructions/read backs and overall lack of english proficiency on the part of the latter makes this type of events very frequent. I personally witness several on a daily basis and for the most part I had only "close calls", but I can see this same event repeating it self over and over again.
Most of the guys recruited into this operator have strong to very strong aviation back grounds, most of them with several thousand PIC hours having served in flag carriers and we are all very skeptical about bonuses being paid in the manner they are advertised when recruited. If you are even thinking on joining an expat contract gig do so with both eyes wide open.
In short, Flying in China is no walk in the park. Your license, career and overall sanity can take a beating before you know it. Be warned...
I will be happy to answer any questions relating to this operation in the public forum.
Last edited by springaviator; 6th Jun 2012 at 00:05.