Wizzair

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Booze, my comments in particular are not intended to be whiney, moany, bitchy or whatever you choose to call them. I post to provide information about what I found it to really be like at the company. Because it's a bit late to realise that you've made a mistake - and you should have researched further - when you're getting up at 03:30 AM, it's pitch black, snowing and minus 25 outside and you soon have to go report for a four sector 12:30 hour pre planned extension day with a grizzled CRM free zone of a Captain who shouts at you for telling him the state of the airframe after your walk-around.

People need to go into this with their eyes open. That means stories from those who've been there. If Wizz has worked for you, great and I'm genuinely pleased but we're allowed our stories too. If you don't like the fact that the majority of people have had a different experience to you, then that's also fine, but it doesn't stop their opinions being valid or give you the right to call them bitchers and moaners because, believe it or not, all we're trying to do is be helpful and give people the bigger picture. I could give a damn if people choose to join Wizz or not, but what I do care about is that people make that decision with some semblance of an informed decision of what it is really going to be like.

Whether you like it or not, the fact is that the vast majority of people at Wizz really don't seem to enjoy the overall package and are looking to get out ASAP. Just look at the staff turnover figures if you want evidence of this. I regularly used to go out for lunch socially with my colleagues at Wizz and the conversation (every single time) was always about which other airlines were recruiting, which we had applied to and where we were in the process of getting out. That was amongst a dozen guys who had been there less than twelve months. I don't know about to you, but that to me is not indicative of a "happy ship".

At a base with three aircraft I went from being the most junior F/O in the base to the third most senior in the space of just SIX MONTHS.

It's an airline to use for maintaining flying currency after a redundancy, getting an upgrade, getting hours on an A320 or whatever but regardless of what you need, get in get the job done and get out. Thanks for your concern, but I don't need to get a life as I moved to a far better airline than Wizz Air and am now about to move to an even better one (for my circumstances) than that, one that was my career goal from day one.

So Wizz served its purpose well but by no means is it a career airline for the vast majority, there may be exceptions. Of course all this should be qualified with the fact that although I hated every minute of my time at Wizz, going there did in retrospect (and quite perversely) turn out to be the best decision I could have ever made when being forced out of my previous airline. Please bear in mind though you may not be so lucky and you may get stuck!