Maybe there's more whingeing these days because employers have less integrity than those of a bygone era.
PNG is challenging, but there are other places equally or more so. The Shetlands, Iran, Peru are just a few AND they all have a season called winter.
If anything, I believe that as well as employers with integrity back in the 60's, we benefited from really thorough training and a graduated 'apprenticeship' system. There was a CAO unique to PNG that required a lot of in-country experience before lifting restrictions on where a pilot could fly. Nowadays a lot of young pilots just get chucked in at the deep end. That mostly they survive says something about their character today being little different to those that went there years before.
The only thing better now is the advent of GPS which helps navigation and enables more accurate approaches. Which is just as well, because most of the good infrastructure that existed under 'colonial' rule has long since been trashed.
Flying in PNG today is not easier, and not harder - maybe a little different. The weather and rocks are still the same, still there, awaiting the unwary....
Last edited by Mach E Avelli; 13th Aug 2014 at 08:11.