Gulf Air Value based airline - the Abu Dhabi base
Can’t help feeling a little disappointed, to say the least, in the way that the whole relocation issue has been handled. The company is obviously aware of the effect of stress upon the performance of pilots and yet has done very little to alleviate this detriment to the safety of its aircraft, crew and passengers. The whole project should have been carefully thought out and organized in such a way that even the most trivial aspects of the move would be taken care of, leaving the pilots to worry about important things like the safety of all the people sitting behind them.
The company should have been very particular in choosing the right person to oversee this project: somebody who was aware of factors affecting human performance; somebody who would have been thorough in organizing all aspects of the relocation down to the finest detail - hard work, but it might have shown the that the company values its staff and indeed (here comes that word again), safety.
The solution: An ‘advisory center’ should have been set up and manned with people specifically there to take care of practicalities and theoretical problems. Prior to setting up this center the ‘advisors’ should have spent time in AUH investigating all the areas where problems and concerns may arise i.e. housing, schools, establishing utility and phone connections, exporting cars and animals etc. All the official forms and applications for car export, animal export, and mobile phone connections etc should have been available at the center so that pilots could call in and complete all the paperwork in one convenient location and well in advance. Literature and information regarding all the aforementioned issues should have been available. After the 1st of June the center would relocate to Abu Dhabi along with the pilots in order to support them as problems arose.
The company is still top heavy in administration staff and the above would not have been economically unfeasible. The reality is that the pilots have been thrown to the lions in the company’s quest for solvency and the company has failed to recognize that loyalty and commitment are two way streets...