It is true, that the general opinion in China, is that TRAINING is not part of the flight duty and totally ignored in regards to FDTL, planning, vacation, etc.
Most of the time you don't even see you training on your flight schedule and just receive an email about
..."Dear Captain, you better attend seasonal training on Sunday from 08:00 - 16:00", which by the way is send on Friday afternoon around 16:30 as last action of the office person before he/she goes home for the weekend.
Followed by a phone call at 16:45, while she/he is sitting in the bus, why you haven't confirmed you attendance yet.
...as if I am online 24/7 just because it might be that there is an email I do understand out of the 20 Chinese mails coming in every day.
As I said, it is a total disrespect towards Training in general and as "you are not productive" this is obviously the way Chinese companies see training...."an expensive thing we have to do, because of the regulation we have to follow, but actually it is not required and we are all great pilots and do not need it".
But lets face also the fact, that there are changes. In some company earlier and in some companies later. Even the CAAC (Civil Aviation Authority of China) was publishing in their revision 02 of CAR-OPS121 (now we are at 04) the following:
[...at the very end of the regulation you find...]
A. NECESSITY
China’s public air transportation enterprises develop quickly since reform opening policy. But due to historical reasons, some original operations management regulations in China’s civil aviation are not complete and systematic and lack of a set of systematic flight standard operations management regulations, having larger differences from ICAO requirements in terms of well-organized and standardized of operations management. For an instance, we have not built the procedures and standards, according to ICAO requirement, for airlines operations certification and continuous supervision; airlines lack of Operations Specification and Operations Manual approved by the government; some concerned Manuals and documents used currently have not been examined and not approved strictly according to ICAO requirement, many aspects do not comply with international standards; training requirements for flight personnel, flight attendants and aircraft dispatchers are low; operational control is not well-organized, etc.. The existence of these problems largely affect flight safety level of China’s civil aviation and its competition status in the international aviation market.
B. ICAO has formulated a series of standards and actions, on the basis of summarizing worldwide aviation experiences, and issued in form of International Civil Aviation Convention Appendix, requiring each member country lays down its own intensive and detailed civil aviation laws and regulations, based on these standards and actions. We are a contracting party of international civil aviation convention, having duty to observe the requirement of international civil aviation convention, and adopting the requirements formulated by ICAO. At present, ICAO has formulated the Manual that is used to evaluate the ability of operations safety management of each government, evaluating each government to promote them carrying out International Civil Aviation Convention Appendix 6 and improve flight safety level of international civil aviation. Some countries have started and prepared for this kind of evaluation to those governments whose airlines flying in their countries. Hence, it will not only affect the improvement of our flight safety level, but also the international flight of airlines in our country provided we can not formulate and carry out the operations management regulation complying with ICAO standards as soon as possible.
C. Generally, formulating an operations management regulation complying with the ICAO standards is necessary to enhance operations management and improve flight safety level of our airlines, and guarantee our airlines entering into international market, at the same time to perform the obligation of International Civil Aviation Convention and increase our prestige worldwide.
As I said...things are changing and China is undergoing huge changes in many aspects, not only aviation. For those pilots, who seek an opportunity and who do not have stability in their countries, I personally think and stand 100% behind this statement, that it is safe enough to come to China and work here as a pilot and if the persons personality can adopt to the culture and he/she can make her points get across through some departments by working together with the others, instead of having "a selfish one-man-show", than things can work out pretty good here.
Oh...for got to mention in all the above, don't see the salary as a overcharged "salary"...look at it as "a small salary similar to the one other companies pay, topped up by a very large compensation for all the fxxx-up you have to suffer sometimes." :-)
FCOM-5