SIE
So much there I would take a week but I'll just stick with this:
Mostly I just want to read the paper and enjoy my coffee. If I'm napping, try not request weather or the ATIS (it's automated now you know). Refer to the Notam package, avoid the red and amber returns on the weather radar, and try to avoid level changes if at all possible. Communication will be your biggest challenge; multiple cultures languages, accents. You can fly whichever sector you want, and if I need to take the landing off you because of the weather, I will. Please don't be offended.
The jets are lovely, the rosters are sometimes tough, pluses and minuses all round. No such thing as a perfect airline. If you find one, go ahead and join it; but not for me thanks. I may mess it up.
If you're napping, then he might have to get weather and disturb you. Of course, if it's your 5th or 6th night turn in 10 days then you won't wake up with the sound of the paper ripping. You might not be able to get to sleep because it's monsoon season, or typhoon season, or the middle of summer in Africa.
Read the NOTAM pack and without experience, you will believe what you're reading. Of course, for most of the stations we go to, the NOTAMs are written with the express intent of being confusing because the airport is seen as being more important if it has 8 (or was it 9?) pages of NOTAMs, most of which are in fact wrong and out of date. With experience, you will learn that there is a way of reading NOTAMs around these parts that will open your eyes to what you're really about to fly towards at 550mph. And you might need to know exactly what you're doing, because the skipper might be using most of his energy trying to stay awake. Try doing that when you have 500 hours.
Avoid the red and amber returns. How about when you can't, because it's monsoon season or you're on the RNAV for 07R in Addis and there's a f**king huge CB everywhere you go? If your skipper is asleep while you're in the cruise, how about the experience you don't have as a low hours joiner that tells you how useless the weather radar is, and that experience you lack that will make you avoid the 'just' green bit on a black night because you know from experience that it shouldn't be green?
Communication will NOT be your biggest challenge. Communication is just one of your many, many challenges in the following destinations:
- Mumbai
- Delhi
- Peshawar
- Sialkot
- Madinah
- Addis
- Harare and Lusaka
- Khartoum
- Nairobi
- Tehran
- Cochin
To name but a few, most of which will, if they are not already, be winging their way to a T7 strapped to you in the near future. Flying into all of those throws up challenges way, way more advanced than anything you could see in an entire career in a Euro/US regional/LCC - where mistakes will be handled sympathetically (of course, whether they should be or not is your opinion) and there are most likely far fewer restrictions on how you are permitted to operate the aeroplane.
I'm pretty sure that flying a 380 into PEK, JFK etc has challenges at least as significant as communication. But at least you're not being turned over by the wake your're leaving for the guys behind you!
You probably will have to take landings off guys, but those landings and the ones they are not permitted to carry out limits their exposure and as such leads them down the path to command without giving them suitable opportunity to hone their skills. A challenge to manage in a big airline, but I'm pretty sure there is a better way than our way. Perhaps by letting 3 stripers do 20Kt crosswind landings for example?
The rosters are sometimes tough?! I've been having a look at rosters and unless you're on the 380 then the rosters SUCK! You're either in the aeroplane every hour of your life (and are credited with half that) or you fly less but every single one of your 10 or 11 trips are night turns and you spends your wonderful 18 non-flying (not XX!) days zombified because you can't remember if normal people are supposed to sleep during the night or the day. That wasn't in the contract and the company gives new joiners the impression that it isn't the case. That is plain wrong.
But you are right on one thing, there is no such thing as a perfect airline. Most guys who have read you post, however, would probably argue that some airlines are a damn sight closer to it than others.
And the jets aren't all lovely...