Originally Posted by
EagleA25
Nahh, it means that due to the Off-Road incident in Hanoi a few months ago the Insurance Company has increased the premiums for FO's upgrading with less than 5000hrs Total Time and 32 years of age (I was told that number by a few FO's). Those seem to be the new requierements...
The direction of the company though is still very vague and seems to change as often as they update the edocs; notable new procedures are in place though: Pilots are now signing Maintenance releases in certain Airports in the A321 fleet; this will increase the responsability and workload; niw you will be blamed for something a Technitian was trained for years to detects and understand; you will, oficially, get 16 hours of hands on quality training!
Long time Expats belive the "happy times" are over: most Expat Captains are already complaining about flying almost to the permissible limit of 100 hours, and short notice schedule changes are now frequent. All Standbys are activated due to lack of pilots in all fleets.
Also, the FOM just changed the "respect your day off" clause; your day off can now always be your "day on"; supposedly ots negotiable, but when you know you'll always pull a short straw, what's to negotiate.
In general the work ambience, at least on the Airbus Fleet here in SGN, has lost a LOT of quality...!
Fun fact though: the more they expand, the more they fly, the more discontent pilots will be, the less pilots will want to join or stick around, the more you get to fly if you stick around, especially on your days off; its a vicious circle. And pay has been the same for Expats for quite some time...
One comment I heared also was that VNA had a lot of complaints from local FO's about ex-S7 Pilots; apparently there are a lot of cultural issues and VNA won't recruit nor renew those Captains contracts. Again, all rumors I hear from local FO's; I don't stick around at the local water holes socializing a lot; with angry wife and two kids things are not as harmonic at home as they could be...
The few Western Expats who are willing to take the new rules are keeping a close eye on things and it appears things are getting worse each month.
Good luck out there
So far for the wishful thinking of getting rid of all expats, like some on this board have been "warning". With a substandard contract (pay and benefits well below most Asian contracts) I wonder how much longer they will be able to fill the seats with expats. Through all these years VNA somehow always managed to get a group of pilots agreeing to work for substandard wages and working conditions. Now that the "happy days" have come to a close and the market is drying up, it will be interesting to watch how it all will keep unfolding.
Pilots signing off on maintenance releases is a liability and could be a career braker. Surprised guys agree to this.