vfr on top: wrt "
The same rosters you were whinging and complaining that were unsafe. Are they not unsafe anymore?", there are two parts to your question:
1) Was it unsafe? Yes, imho, the rosters 'way-back-when' were often unsafe, albeit that they were always ‘legal', e.g. just look at the Rest Periods within that roster that I've posted (
above) and go figure just how tired you'd be with such sympathetic Rest Periods as those?!… and that particular roster was
far from being a one-off, i.e. we endured that sort of thing for years! Indeed so concerned were some of us, that at least one of us (
) filed a ROSI with the GCAA about it; and be well advised that that - in the environment we're in here - takes some serious balls!
2) Is it still unsafe? Uhm, that’s never an easy question to answer; Perhaps a better question would be “
Has it got better, and is it getting better?”. On both counts for that latter question, I’d say, "Yes!". And before you say “
Yeah, but you would say that, i.e. a bloody ‘A’ scaler sitting at the top of the bid”, I would point out that a couple of months back, I managed to miss the deadline to enter my bids into PBS (
) but, nevertheless, the roster I got was still
massively better than the ones we endured in the years gone by. QED?!
You’ve got to put it into the context of where we were, versus where we are now, and where things are going in the future. It is without any doubt that PBS has improved our lot and our lifestyle; and trust me when I say that if they were to ditch PBS and return to the non-PBS system, there would be an exodus, and it’s much for that reason that PBS was introduced, i.e. to prevent an exodus (
and I suspect especially so of the more 'senior' pilots)!
And here's an interesting proposition: You might recall, from a little while ago, that the pilots were asked to produce a summary of their flying experience, i.e. hours on type / total hours. Uhm, now why was that (
really)?
There's a suggestion out there that the GCAA (
and probably also the aircraft Insurers) were becoming 'concerned' that the company might be suffering a 'dilution' of its overall experience level, i.e. what with all the new Cmd upgrades coming on stream, plus significant numbers of previously un-type-rated pilots joining the company, and therein the question was asked about what is the average experience level, and what are FZ doing to ensure that the experience levels stay strategically high?... always remembering that the last thing anybody wants is an incident / accident with the word 'Dubai' written somewhere down the side of it!
Of course with T&C's not exactly keeping pace with the costs of living in Dubai, there needed to be found a method to help with 'retention' (
especially so of the folks with very high levels of experience on the B737, i.e. typically ones 'senior' pilots / the early joiners)... and the easiest (
and cheapest) way to do that is to introduce PBS, i.e. it's an almost instant lifestyle win for the 'senior' pilots, and one that certainly helps with their retention, all whilst the new joiners are held captive by their bond.
Whilst this aforementioned suggestion might be pure speculation, it might certainly be said to have a level of plausibility to it.