Don't know if there would be many Big Bus pilots available these days, leave alone the ones willing to join QR. According to the latest projections of the aviation industry, the industry has already entered in era of unprecedented shortage of airline pilots for coming years.
The problem with QR is that it is not a professionally managed company. Airline management is a specialized field of study. Many major universities offer MBA in airline management.
Qatari locals sure enough want to be in management and they have a right to do so, after all it is their national airline. However, if the person at the 9th floor would have had any sense himself, he would have arranged scholarships for the locals to go and study aviation management and earn a qualification from a university that would allow them to return to QR and make great managers.
Unfortunately, this was not done at an early stage of QR's establishment and expansion. And so for all these years QR's management has been nothing more than a monster without a head.
The locals have always been put in important Flt. Ops. management positions but brought nothing but childishness to the job. Their attitude has been "This our toy and we'll play with it the way we like" they fail to realize QR's reliance on expat pilots for their very existence and also that their unprofessional behavior is putting people in undue misery.
This talk of foreign bases and compressed rosters has been going on for at least the last 8 years, but despite being perfectly workable, does not materialize because of the Qatari mindset. It's considered a great management failure to have an employee be seen walking around with a smile.
Alas! it's not likely to change. So where do we go from here? Just wait and watch! Shortly there will be a panic situation like many before, when all the toys on order arrive and no pilots to play with them. Then the chief will come up with a new pay package, make a disgusting speech, and send out his loyalist on a treasure hunt for pilots from all the bankrupt airlines of the world. He will look himself in the mirror, pat his own back and tell himself "Brilliantly Done!
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So whoever says we are not likely to get a pay rise, doesn't know QR well enough. Just wait and watch. Bon Voyage!