I have just seen this comment from
RexBanner a few posts back:
I can only echo, however, the sentiments regarding Flybe before the January announcement of three years ago. A simply wonderful place to work with opportunities for a great lifestyle. If the archangel Gabriel came down now and told me "Rex you can go back to Flybe with things exactly how they were but the company will be stable and profitable and it will never change but you must stay there until retirement" I would happily give up my long haul ambitions right now and go back.
Rex took the words right out of my mouth. I had five years at Flybe, left in the great cull of 2013, survived a couple of years in the sandpit and now fly a very big aeroplane for a very big airline. Of all of them, Flybe was by far and away the most enjoyable lifestyle and flying – and considering I now spend my flights choosing 1st class food and planning bunk time instead of saying ‘ALT SEL’, waiting for the aircraft to try and bite me and wondering when I’ll have time for a pee – that says a lot for how good it was. Small bases, going flying with your mates, wonderful camaraderie, banter and social life with the cabin crew, maybe 500hrs per year, no night flying – it was a flying club rather than a job. Put me back at NWI, LGW, NCL or INV and convince me my job was secure, and I’d be as happy as a pig in the proverbial.
Sadly, those days are long gone (along with many of the bases). Friends who are still there are just as poorly paid as before, but have lost most of the lifestyle compensations. Nine days off a month is do-able with short 2-sector days and standbys you can do from home, especially when they rarely call you. It’s not so much fun with 80hrs a month and relentless 4 and 6 sector days. The company used to boast about the great regional lifestyle it offered, but all those little bases with the club-house atmosphere are history.
To be fair, Flybe have got some of the fundamentals spot on. As others have mentioned, the training and safety culture is second to none, which helps to make it a great first job. However, commercially they have all too often been a shambles, stumbling from one crisis or poor strategic decision to the next.
For someone starting out, it’s a good place to get decent training and valuable experience. For a DEC with no mortgage who is running the clock down to retirement and can go part-time it can be a nice little hobby job. For everyone in between – particularly folks with kids and/or big mortgages – it never was much of a career airline, and is even less so these days.
Oh, and for what it’s worth, I’ve flown the Q400, 737 and 777, and the Dash is by some margin the trickiest one to fly. The Boeings are boring - but at least they have ovens.
Pot Noodle anyone?
